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> Yes, we all love to complain about paying overhead, the same way we all love to complain about paying taxes. "If only I didn't have to pay this chunk of money

> Yes, we all love to complain about paying overhead, the same way we all love to complain about paying taxes. "If only I didn't have to pay this chunk of money, imagine what more I could do for myself!" I agree with you! I believe a tax rate of 0% OR 100% is insane, and the right number is somewhere in the middle. Right now, paying 67-50% "taxes" to the university and then also paying ~30% in real taxes just seems unfair/inefficient/unjust.

ModernMech 4y ago
unfair - what is the fair amount? I think if we were to decrease university overhead, anyone whose stipend may be affected by that would be right to say that it's unfair they are left without a stipend while you not only maintain yours, it might even increase. inefficient - yes, probably. But I'm not sure that many universities' missions are related to efficiency. This of course makes it a bad profit maximizing organization, which is fine because it was never intended to be one. For instance, it might be more efficient for a university to cut all the under-enrolled programs and to only focus on STEM. But the mission statement of the university precludes that, so STEM is heavily taxed to support the philosophy department. It's not efficient, but I'm happy we have a philosophy department. Also there's another degree of efficiency here, which is economies of scale. Overhead goes to pay for administration (the one HN loves to hate) which to a large degree increases my efficiency. For example, research overhead goes to fund the research office, which helps me get grants and stay compliant. They help me file for patents, and publish my work. Professors wouldn't be able to afford the staff at the research office with our individual grants, and even if we could we would be inefficiently duplicating the office in each of our individual labs. But by pooling our money (paying the overhead tax), we can afford a number of support staff who can help us all write better grants. unjust - what is the just amount? The PI knows ahead of time all the taxes, and can request as much as they need from the funding organization to conduct the research. The only limit here is the total budget of the funding organization. If it's a public organization like the NSF, that budget is set by Congress, which is democratically elected. Your stipend is only limited due to the public's willingness to fund research. Since all of this follows the rule of law which has been democratically decided upon, I don't agree that the system is unjust.

ModernMech 4y ago

unfair - what is the fair amount? I think if we were to decrease university overhead, anyone whose stipend may be affected by that would be right to say that it's unfair they are left without a stipend while you not only maintain yours, it might even increase. inefficient - yes, probably. But I'm not sure that many universities' missions are related to efficiency. This of course makes it a bad profit maximizing organization, which is fine because it was never intended to be one. For instance, it might be more efficient for a university to cut all the under-enrolled programs and to only focus on STEM. But the mission statement of the university precludes that, so STEM is heavily taxed to support the philosophy department. It's not efficient, but I'm happy we have a philosophy department. Also there's another degree of efficiency here, which is economies of scale. Overhead goes to pay for administration (the one HN loves to hate) which to a large degree increases my efficiency. For example, research overhead goes to fund the research office, which helps me get grants and stay compliant. They help me file for patents, and publish my work. Professors wouldn't be able to afford the staff at the research office with our individual grants, and even if we could we would be inefficiently duplicating the office in each of our individual labs. But by pooling our money (paying the overhead tax), we can afford a number of support staff who can help us all write better grants. unjust - what is the just amount? The PI knows ahead of time all the taxes, and can request as much as they need from the funding organization to conduct the research. The only limit here is the total budget of the funding organization. If it's a public organization like the NSF, that budget is set by Congress, which is democratically elected. Your stipend is only limited due to the public's willingness to fund research. Since all of this follows the rule of law which has been democratically decided upon, I don't agree that the system is unjust.