I didn't use the word "stealing", but they take a cut from the grant money allocated to the PI. Maybe here is another perspective. NSF "Smalls" in my program a

I didn't use the word "stealing", but they take a cut from the grant money allocated to the PI. Maybe here is another perspective. NSF "Smalls" in my program are 500K, and Army "YIPs" are 360K. If I get a Small or a YIP, and my friend at another university with half the overhead gets the same Small or YIP, my friend will get more spending money than me. I get 300K on the Small, and my friend gets 380K. To do the essentially same unit quantity of research. A university with a higher overhead takes 80K more from the grant that would have gone to the lab.