Gladwell is (IMHO) a bit of an ass, but anyone in academia knows that the richest research universities also make a habit of ripping off the federal government

Gladwell is (IMHO) a bit of an ass, but anyone in academia knows that the richest research universities also make a habit of ripping off the federal government in the form of research indirects. Notionally, indirects are overhead for administration and distribution of grants (typically hundreds of thousands to tens of millions of taxpayer-provided dollars) but if someone could explain to me why it costs Mass General 90% of the grant's value to hand the money to the researchers that wrote it, or why Stanford will go broke if it doesn't recover at least another 58% above and beyond the face value of a $10m P01 grant despite getting oceans of free $$$ from CIRM, I'd be much obliged. The research industrial complex isn't exactly on a par with the military industrial complex, but donors can certainly vote with their wallets against the most egregious abusers. (For what it's worth, shitty little schools like USC and UMich can somehow manage to hand off decent sized grants for less than half the "service charge" of a Stanford or a Harvard... I'd pretend it's because of the football teams but Stanford doesn't have that excuse either!). The example of a private donor marching in and rescuing a nearly bankrupt Glassboro is cool, although I wonder if it will be a permanent solution if the school doesn't fix whatever got them in that mess. In that respect, Harvard and Stanford and Princeton are rather safe bets. But safe bets are for wusses anyways, so fuck that. :-D