70% is not that high these days -- there are institutions (normally non-university-affiliated research institutions like the Salk Institute that still apply for

70% is not that high these days -- there are institutions (normally non-university-affiliated research institutions like the Salk Institute that still apply for NIH and NSF grants) have overheads of 90%! It's important to realize that overheads aren't taken out of the grant given to the researcher, they are added to it. So if a researcher gets a $100K grant at institution with 70% overhead, the institution gets $170K.