Well rule of thumb or no, this is basically how much universities add on to grant applications. The highest postdoc salary in the UK (prior to permanent positio

Well rule of thumb or no, this is basically how much universities add on to grant applications. The highest postdoc salary in the UK (prior to permanent positions) is roughly £40k on the national spine scale. But if you put in funding for a postdoc, the uni will claim something like £80-100k per year. Say we get a half million pound grant. That will typically cover two postdocs for two years, plus capital and incidental costs. Where does that £40k go? For a start we don't require private health insurance in the UK (we pay out of our taxes). Some of it is estates upkeep (offices, labs, capital equipment, cleaning etc), internal grants, support infrastructure (IT, computing), interview/acquisition cost, legal/HR costs, training, insurance, bonuses, employee benefits/pension matching and employer tax burden. Most universities put the rest into an "overheads" pot which can be used for a variety of things. Most grants have a separate section for conference travel, publishing expenses, etc. In a smaller company, all of these things need to be added on (unless you're grant funded). So you're also considering expenses on top. If you pay someone to headhunt a candidate, that can be thousands plus a percentage of salary. We have access to a lot of training courses, most of which bill the university thousands per head. The labour and legal costs alone of hiring candidates can also be very high. Think of a company like Google where your interviewers may well be on six figure salaries. In the US a typical hire costs about $4k. If your company depends on bums on seats to make money, the time between someone leaving and someone starting is costing you a fortune. Depending where the company makes money, your overheads may also be paying for other staff. For example the university has an HR department, finance, legal, cleaning, estates, etc. None of those people generate any money for the university directly, though they are necessary for it to function. Some of their salaries are paid for by IP royalties, tuition fees and government subsidies, but a big chunk is from research grants.