[jeffbee]

You don't seem to have any experience with the subject. The "overhead" in question is, for example, the person who keeps clean glassware in inventory for chemistry, or the veterinarian for animal subjects, or the ethics board.

[transcriptase]

And in the case of massive projects where service providers do the wet work, your lab primarily deals with data analysis, or you don’t even do your research with university space/equipment, they still get 30-60% just because.

This isn’t some conspiracy theory. Look at how much grant money a given university brings in annually and ask yourself if 30-60% of that number is being spent on overhead related to research. It’s not.

[secabeen]

> Look at how much grant money a given university brings in annually and ask yourself if 30-60% of that number is being spent on overhead related to research. It’s not.

Look at a consulting company or law firm. Most will charge you 2-3x the salary cost of the consultant or lawyer you're getting. This limits universities to 1.15x.

[meetingthrower]

Right - but as a consulting partner I take home that margin to spend on my boats, homes, and watches. What are universities getting? More university...

[secabeen]

To be clear, this is not margin, it's non-direct expenses. So the consulting partners probably take home half of that multiplier as profits, and the other half goes to pay for the paralegals, AR/AP, HR, IT, office lease, janitorial .... all the things that Universities use their overhead to cover. What a surprise!

[jeffbee]

It is. The larger the institution, the higher the overhead ratio, perversely because they are more efficient scientific organizations. UCSF can get a grant to study something and 2/3rds of the costs are overhead because absolutely everything at that institution is shared.