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Some believe this cut will be covered by the research universities and their associated medical centers. That may be true for a limited time, in a few institute

by clcaev 2y ago

Some believe this cut will be covered by the research universities and their associated medical centers. That may be true for a limited time, in a few institutes, for a small set of cases. However, it’s just a cut to medical research, and a deep one at that. Indirect costs support researchers’ needs that the institution provides. For example, who ensures the researcher’s laptop is secure? For basic research, how is lab equipment obtained? Who provides infrastructure to access observational data from an electronic health record system? Categorize these services as you wish, but these services are needed, they have costs, and the expense will need to be covered for medical research to happen. If they can no longer be considered indirect, then they will become itemized and the researcher’s direct budget will have to cover them. For example, laptops permitted to access the institutional network may have a monthly fee that covers system admin time. In the short run, it’ll mean some research simply won’t happen as the researcher doesn’t have budget for new fees the institution charges for equipment/services that were previously “free”. For new grants, it means a greater part of the research budget will have to be itemized with these costs, eg less funding for researcher or graduate assistant effort. Either the overall grant direct costs will have to go up, or less research happens.

analog31 2y ago
Indeed the status quo is that these costs are spread over the research projects without having to itemize each expense. Now every research lab, from small to large, will need to hire an accountant to keep track of expenses. Or the grad students spending their time filling out spreadsheets. That strikes me as probably being a lot less efficient.
- FranzFerdiNaN 2y ago
  Lets not pretend efficiency had anything to do with this. It’s all part of an ordinary power grab by the cronies of Trump and Musk, with the only goal the looting of America.
csa 2y ago
> eg the researcher doesn’t have budget for new fees the institution charges for equipment/services that were previously “free” I think many people don’t realize this point. The universities made it easy with large indirect costs that also covered a lot. The biggest research universities will just be able to take a lower indirect cost and start charging for things that used to be included in indirect costs. This may sound more “transparent” or “efficient”, and it is in some ways, but adding admin work to track stuff like this is its own form of inefficiency. It will be like moving from an AYCE model to an a la carte model, but the grant writer will need to know the orders and special requests needed by everyone many months (or more) before the grant is scheduled to start. This is not the strong suit of researchers and/or grant writers. This will end up being a shit show.
- KennyBlanken 2y ago
  > The biggest research universities will just be able to take a lower indirect cost and start charging for things that used to be included in indirect costs. That's not how that works. You can't change what's direct vs indirect. Direct means the cost is directly (and solely) for what the grant was written for. Indirect means all the stuff everyone uses. Violating those rules will get you in a lot of trouble if you're caught, and since a lot of this stuff is audited, you will likely get caught. And yes, the audit process costs money and adds to indirect costs. Just like all the paperwork and audits and so on done for programs like food stamps often dwarfs the
  - csa 2y ago
    > You can't change what's direct vs indirect. I may have incorrectly used a term of art there. That said… I am certain that universities will not come out on the short end of this deal for very long, if at all. There are myriad ways they can do this that will pass an audit. Some games I’ve seen played before the current nonsense: - put requests from unfavored grants at the bottom of the priority list - move unfavored grants to crappy and/or inconvenient locations (my favorite was when they split one “group” into four different buildings, basically giving them everyone else’s space scraps) - cut rotations for things like cleaning staff to the absolute contractual minimum - stop providing free QoL perks - the worst case scenario is where they just provide a lower level of service to everyone University administrations are pros at being petty tyrants — it’s their superpower. The question is in what ways will they use these powers when their cut from certain grants is reduced.

by clcaev 2y ago

analog31 2y ago

Indeed the status quo is that these costs are spread over the research projects without having to itemize each expense. Now every research lab, from small to large, will need to hire an accountant to keep track of expenses. Or the grad students spending their time filling out spreadsheets. That strikes me as probably being a lot less efficient.

FranzFerdiNaN 2y ago
Lets not pretend efficiency had anything to do with this. It’s all part of an ordinary power grab by the cronies of Trump and Musk, with the only goal the looting of America.

csa 2y ago

> eg the researcher doesn’t have budget for new fees the institution charges for equipment/services that were previously “free” I think many people don’t realize this point. The universities made it easy with large indirect costs that also covered a lot. The biggest research universities will just be able to take a lower indirect cost and start charging for things that used to be included in indirect costs. This may sound more “transparent” or “efficient”, and it is in some ways, but adding admin work to track stuff like this is its own form of inefficiency. It will be like moving from an AYCE model to an a la carte model, but the grant writer will need to know the orders and special requests needed by everyone many months (or more) before the grant is scheduled to start. This is not the strong suit of researchers and/or grant writers. This will end up being a shit show.

KennyBlanken 2y ago
> The biggest research universities will just be able to take a lower indirect cost and start charging for things that used to be included in indirect costs. That's not how that works. You can't change what's direct vs indirect. Direct means the cost is directly (and solely) for what the grant was written for. Indirect means all the stuff everyone uses. Violating those rules will get you in a lot of trouble if you're caught, and since a lot of this stuff is audited, you will likely get caught. And yes, the audit process costs money and adds to indirect costs. Just like all the paperwork and audits and so on done for programs like food stamps often dwarfs the
- csa 2y ago
  > You can't change what's direct vs indirect. I may have incorrectly used a term of art there. That said… I am certain that universities will not come out on the short end of this deal for very long, if at all. There are myriad ways they can do this that will pass an audit. Some games I’ve seen played before the current nonsense: - put requests from unfavored grants at the bottom of the priority list - move unfavored grants to crappy and/or inconvenient locations (my favorite was when they split one “group” into four different buildings, basically giving them everyone else’s space scraps) - cut rotations for things like cleaning staff to the absolute contractual minimum - stop providing free QoL perks - the worst case scenario is where they just provide a lower level of service to everyone University administrations are pros at being petty tyrants — it’s their superpower. The question is in what ways will they use these powers when their cut from certain grants is reduced.