4 ms·

The core problem are grant procedures. Universities get a 20%+ cut of grants a professor eecieved. Therefore they wants professors who receive lots of grants.

The core problem are grant procedures. Universities get a 20%+ cut of grants a professor eecieved. Therefore they wants professors who receive lots of grants. Grant awarders are judged on their ability to choose applicants that create value using those funds. An easy metric is papers produced. And those who publish lots of papers in the past is a good predictor of future production. So these are the applicants that get funded. Another problem is the lack of funds for professor positions relative to the number of trained applicants. With so many qualified academics, departments have to use some metric to base decisions, and publications is more measurable (grant $$$) than scientific value.

mattkrause 10y ago
20+% is optimistic. Overhead rates (at R1s in the US) are closer to 50-70%. I've heard tell of places with extremely specialized facilities (like deep-sea research vessels) that charge nearly 100% overhead (i.e., to spend $50,000 on "your" research, you need to bring in at least 100,000).
- SubiculumCode 10y ago
  Yes. But there is variability per institute and so was trying to be conservative in the lower threshold of the percentage cut. The university cut does make some sense. There are a lot of services on which PI's rely. Administration to handle hiring processes. Building maintenance and plumbing. But per usual, instead of just covering costs, it is viewed as revenue on which to grow the university (and admin pay). Actually, I am not sure whether university cut factors into funding decisions at NIH and the like.
  - mattkrause 10y ago
    Sure, I just wanted to put the actual numbers out there because 20% or so actually seems pretty fair for keeping the lights on, taking out the trash, etc, while 70+% is....a lot. On top of this, a lot of the....infrastructure is still fee-for-service. The university may fund the initial purchase of an MRI scanner (or whatever) out of overhead, but individual labs still pay $400+ an hour to use it. I don't know if the NIH or NSF takes overhead into account, but many of the most successful grantees also have some of the highest overhead so probably not. On the flip side, I've heard someone claim that their department chair strongly encouraged applying for NIH grants, because the NIH-negotatied overhead rate is much higher than other funders (also, allegedly more prestigious, but you'd think $500,000 spends about the same, regardless of where it comes from).

mattkrause 10y ago

20+% is optimistic. Overhead rates (at R1s in the US) are closer to 50-70%. I've heard tell of places with extremely specialized facilities (like deep-sea research vessels) that charge nearly 100% overhead (i.e., to spend $50,000 on "your" research, you need to bring in at least 100,000).

SubiculumCode 10y ago
Yes. But there is variability per institute and so was trying to be conservative in the lower threshold of the percentage cut. The university cut does make some sense. There are a lot of services on which PI's rely. Administration to handle hiring processes. Building maintenance and plumbing. But per usual, instead of just covering costs, it is viewed as revenue on which to grow the university (and admin pay). Actually, I am not sure whether university cut factors into funding decisions at NIH and the like.
- mattkrause 10y ago
  Sure, I just wanted to put the actual numbers out there because 20% or so actually seems pretty fair for keeping the lights on, taking out the trash, etc, while 70+% is....a lot. On top of this, a lot of the....infrastructure is still fee-for-service. The university may fund the initial purchase of an MRI scanner (or whatever) out of overhead, but individual labs still pay $400+ an hour to use it. I don't know if the NIH or NSF takes overhead into account, but many of the most successful grantees also have some of the highest overhead so probably not. On the flip side, I've heard someone claim that their department chair strongly encouraged applying for NIH grants, because the NIH-negotatied overhead rate is much higher than other funders (also, allegedly more prestigious, but you'd think $500,000 spends about the same, regardless of where it comes from).