[Tadpole9181]

This is a fundamental misunderstanding of research funding, and quite frankly repeating it without even basic research borders on negligence.

Universities use indirect funds for maintaining facilities, the shared equipment, bulk purchases of materials, staff for things like cleaning and disposal. It is pivotal that these funds are available in the right amount or research physically cannot happen despite being "indirect" (due merely to the legal definition of the word). And these rates are aggressively negotiated beforehand.

Can university administration be trimmed? Can their heads be paid less? Of course. But the idea that that's going to happen is absurd. If you want to stop that, you make laws and regulations. If you want to stop the science, you gut the financial viability of research.

[bfrink]

Indirect rates are negotiated. What are the incentives for the government negotiators to get the lowest possible rate? I honestly don't know; I'd like to understand more about the underlying drivers here.

[Tadpole9181]

Why does any business' requisitons staff manage their purchases? Because it's quite literally their job. They have limited money to allocate based on their budget, and their lifelong career is trying to make that money work as effectively as possible at keeping the American research "institution" powerful. That's why grants have application processes and contract negotiations

And it's also why it's so insulting to just dismiss this whole process and claim rampant fraud with zero evidence. It's basically accusing thousands of people of being lazy and felonious and maliciously negligent. It's telling thousands of researchers who struggle for funding that they're apparently just morons for not getting in on the "infinite cash" we purportedly hand out like candy. It's saying universities don't need buildings or janitors and shouldn't take bulk discounts on their raw materials. Etc.

This isn't even getting into the absurd misunderstanding of economics of treating a government grant like a hamburger purchase. The US gives money to a US university which purchases US materials and pays US staff that are all taxed to give money to the US government. And their findings develop knowledge and cultivate skilled labor in the US that produce higher value exports for the US which are taxed to the US government. They aren't buying a hamburger, they're taking on what has proven to be one of the best investments in world history.

[fallingknife]

I do not believe that sharing costs of facilities and equipment is so difficult that research universities can't handle it while every condo association in the US somehow manages to pull it off. I do not believe you that this is aggressively negotiated down by the government because private research grants come with much lower indirect costs percentages.

> Can university administration be trimmed? Can their heads be paid less? Of course. But the idea that that's going to happen is absurd.

Well I guess we just have to pay for endlessly expanding bureaucracy then, because apparently expecting research universities to be somewhat efficient with their resources is "absurd."

> If you want to stop that, you make laws and regulations.

Good idea! Maybe we can limit how much they can spend on overhead. Oh, wait...

[Tadpole9181]

You're clearly not involved even remotely in academia and are just parroting bullshit you saw on your news outlet. What's even the point when you can just declare "no, it's totally a problem and they can just magically make money appear and I'm totally aware of the negotiation process for grants". Good Lord.

[fallingknife]

I can see I've hit a nerve here. But it's ok. I understand that the fact that private research grants contain indirect percentages less than half of the federal rate and yet still the universities not refuse them is a very difficult thing for you to argue against. It's understandable that you would resort to appeals to authority and ad hominems when you can't present a logical argument.

[nxobject]

> I understand that the fact that private research grants contain indirect percentages less than half of the federal rate and yet still the universities not refuse them is a very difficult thing for you to argue against.

Here's an easy approach to a counterargument.

Private foundation grants account for less than 10% of all research funding in the sciences [1]. The fact that researchers apply for and receive private grants has _nothing_ to do with whether their funding restrictions would be sustainable when scaled up.

https://ncses.nsf.gov/pubs/nsf24332

[brokeAstronomer]

There are fixed costs associated with running research labs and facilities. Just because private funding can (sometimes) come with lower allocations for overheads doesn't mean that research can continue at pace without the public grant overheads. The vast bulk of research money is public not private.

While I will happily concede that there is always room for improvement with how we fund research, your suggestions are impractical and would heavily handicap existing efforts.

[fallingknife]

I guess the problem is that I just don't trust them. It's a bunch of university administrators and government bureaucrats (two groups I trust on the level of used car dealers) spending other people's money. I think the solution to this is transparency. If these universities want to continue getting tax exempt status and generous overhead allocations out of taxpayer funds, then they should be required to release their budgets to the public. It they are actually spending all that money on reasonable research costs, then fine, but I want to see the receipts.

[lompad]

You are fundamentally misunderstanding the balance of power here.

In your mind it seems to be "those people come pleading for money so they can do research, giving it is essentially charity"- but it couldn't be further from the truth.

Most top-tier researchers can do their science anywhere. If you don't make stuff easy and comfortable enough to hold them, they'll just leave the country. A significant chunk of science spending is an attempt to bribe researchers to stay. Drop that and other countries are going to get those invaluable people.

I can tell you that several major EU universities have started massive outreach programs and are starting to snatch all the top researchers from the US. The damage this will cause to the US' scientific leadership is not even quantifiable, it's completely insane.

Shooting your own foot because you "don't trust bureaucrats". Oh well.

Anyway, at my university the first few top researchers already arrived, this is going to be exciting in european research. If you guys don't want this massive advantage, we'll gladly take it.

[Fomite]

A couple things:

1) We refuse them when we can. Like if you have a lower indirect rate, my institution's policy is that has to be located somewhere that's documented, you can't just do it. I did have one where the sponsored programs folks just said no.

2) As mentioned, they're sort of a drop in the bucket, and also important to junior faculty, so they're a little bit accepted as loss leaders.

3) At several institutions, it was made clear to me that if you relied on these, and not "full fat" grants, by the time you came up for tenure, things would be bad.

The great irony is every research administrator I know (and I know a lot) sort of hates these. If they had wanted to, "You cannot charge a private organization a indirect rate lower than your negotiated federal rate of the same type" (there are different rates depending on the nature of the project) would probably have been met with "Yeah, that tracks."

Instead, they're trying to use it as an excuse to absolutely gut research.

[Tadpole9181]

There it is again. Private research grants are often taken at loss, subsidized by the actual scientific funding infrastructure that has made the US the world superpower of science.

[Fomite]

> Good idea! Maybe we can limit how much they can spend on overhead. Oh, wait...

These rates are negotiated with the federal government. There's already a mechanism for this.

[mrtesthah]

>Good idea! Maybe we can limit how much they can spend on overhead. Oh, wait...

Sure, that's Congress' job. The executive branch's current attempts to reduce it via executive order have no basis in law and therefore are not valid.