2 ms·
Often, when you look at those animal facilities run by universities through indirect costs, they are often not efficient. And NIH provides granting mechanisms
by dekhn 2y ago
Often, when you look at those animal facilities run by universities through indirect costs, they are often not efficient. And NIH provides granting mechanisms that last for several years and allow for capital building. Ideally (although I wouldn't expect this to happen with the current admin) NIH could give more money to investigators. But I would argue that in many cases, things like animal facilities should be centralized and housed in only a few locations.
It's a complicated situation and I can't speak for every scientist, but I certainly saw tons of waste (closet clusters that were "free" for the investigator because the university paid for it... through overhead... adminned by grad students since they were "paid for" by training grants.) Similar complaints about wet labs. After working in that environment and moving to industry, I've seen what infrastructure built around efficiency can achieve.
- acdha 2y agoYes, I don’t want to say there isn’t room for improvement but this is like deciding you need to lose weight and concluding the fastest way involves a chainsaw. I would much prefer to live in the alternate universe where there was a serious program to rethink infrastructure efficiency.
- jltsiren 2y agoA lot of the inefficiency comes from being an educational institution. Mentoring grad students is inefficient. Giving research opportunities to undergrads is even more inefficient. Universities would be far more efficient if they would only hire researchers with PhDs and professional support staff. But then they wouldn't be educational institutions.
- Fomite 2y agoThis. I had someone try to claim once that having three undergrads in my lab meant a lot of research would be done. I had to explain that they were all net negatives - worthwhile ones, but not productive.