Most labs lack the experience or equipment to efficiently do all aspects of their work, so departments will create "core facilities" which house specialized equ

Most labs lack the experience or equipment to efficiently do all aspects of their work, so departments will create "core facilities" which house specialized equipment and personnel with relevant experience to facilitate specific aspects of research. Examples from biology could be imaging work, cultivating cells, working with animals, working with DNA etc. A machine shop, these glass blowers, or a computational cluster would be examples from other departments. These facilities are made available to researchers for a fee (think cost center). The reason these aren't more prevelant is that the universities typically don't pay for them directly; they are frequently funded by a department and stocked with equipment purchased by individual labs. In exchange for donating equipment, the labs get priority access and have supplies and equipment maintenance costs paid for by the department. IN THEORY cores and other communal resources should be paid for by university overhead (basically a fee assessed on each grant or funding source brought in). In practice, overhead goes to pay for a bunch of bullshit that has nothing to do with research.