You have misunderstood a number of things. Overheads are expressed as a fraction of direct costs, not of the total grant. If the total grant was $650k, 55% ove

You have misunderstood a number of things. Overheads are expressed as a fraction of direct costs, not of the total grant. If the total grant was $650k, 55% overhead would be $230k. If the direct costs were $650k, the total grant was $1M. Universities rarely have significant amounts of money they can use freely. Most of the time, if they want to do something (such as training a PhD), someone must pay specifically for that. And if the PhD student needs a supervisor, someone must pay for the time the supervisor uses supervising the student. Your grant was not supposed to give you a huge pile of loose money to use as you see fit. It was supposed to pay your stipend and tuition (and benefits, if there were any). And give you a small amount for research expenses on top of that. You gained independence (by not being dependent on your supervisor's funding) and credibility (by winning a competitive grant). You may have also gained the ability to continue your PhD (if your supervisor was about to run out of money). But often the biggest winner with grants like that is the supervisor, who can now use their grant money to hire another PhD student.