[themafia]

I genuinely don't understand this. This is due to my lack of experience in University since I never went, and my experience with laboratories, since I've only ever been in one, much to the annoyance of my best friends girlfriend at the time, who was studying Chinook and their spawning behavior.

My understanding is the grants you're talking about are generally for small student salaries as they work on a given project simultaneously with their continued education. Is there not another way to fund these projects? Is there not a better way to engage students into these projects? I don't recall most students having a wide array of choices when it comes to taking on these opportunities.

Is this not a chance to improve a rather ancient and clumsy system?

[pyrale]

> Is this not a chance to improve a rather ancient and clumsy system?

I seriously doubt that there is any will to improve the system.

> My understanding is the grants you're talking about are generally for small student salaries as they work on a given project simultaneously with their continued education.

Grants cover a much larger part of the work at labs. Basically, a grant could be paying anything except tenured salaries and administrative costs.

[noelwelsh]

Grants are usually for projects. Projects may include a portion for postgraduate students, but also pay a lot of other things such as running costs for a lab, travel, conference fees, etc. The costs of running, say, a biology lab are very high (lots of equipment, need to employ technicians as well).