3 ms·

Too many people think these are funds to just run the universities. By and large, what is being withheld are funds for research. Federally-funded academic scie

Too many people think these are funds to just run the universities. By and large, what is being withheld are funds for research. Federally-funded academic science often looks like: 1. The university + government fund/run a project 2. Project creates new knowledge (cool!) 3. The government gets a pretty awesome license to use that knowledge 4. The government more often than not gives that knowledge away (or offers great accessible licensing), so that 5. Private industry can adapt, apply and commercialize the knowledge, driving new GDP growth and opportunities for improving life, etc. Withholding these funds ends the research projects, because Universities are not startup incubators. So the research stops, and one of the highest returning pipelines of new GDP growth for the US dries up—unless today, the professors and universities kiss the president's ring and promise to wipe out 50-100 years of human rights improvements.

lowercased 1y ago
It's that last step - 5 - which I think is a missing piece of the discussion. A lot of private company pharma and medical research is often doing the 'last mile' work that started in university research programs. Stuff that looks promising is picked up and commercialized, but there's usually significant work the research people have done before big commercial players take it to market. They're not doing all their research from scratch - they're taking the best bits funded by our government research programs and bringing them to market. Cutting university research will damage the private sector pretty quickly.
- ajmurmann 1y ago
  It even goes beyond the concrete research that eventually gets commercialized. One pharma startup I am familiar with has much of its research-related leadership and board staffed with very successful current or former academic researchers who used to run their own labs or even departments. We cannot shift skill acquisition like that over night to private industry.
timewizard 1y ago
On #3 "government gets a pretty awesome license" seems disingenuous. From what I've witnessed some specific agencies get to use that license in a rather limited way. It's often not broadly available to the public and commercial rights tend to be reserved to the University. Is that actually what most people would think of as "pretty awesome?" On #4, "more often than not" and "offers great accessible licensing" seems equally disingenuous. Further, why should any of us have to license technology or patents that were primarily funded by tax revenue? Shouldn't that just be automatically and fully open? When the government decides to sequester that knowledge what process do I have to challenge that? On #5, outside of pharmaceutical companies, what are these new GDP growth and returning pipelines that actually get created and impact citizens directly?
- trollbridge 1y ago
  Yeah, my experience is the patent gets licenced to some private entity that then squeezes a profit of it. The public sure doesn’t “benefit”. I’d prefer to see such funding going to state universities, not private ones.
  - amanaplanacanal 1y ago
    The public benefits by access to treatments that wouldn't exist had the research not been done. On the other hand I agree that research funded by tax dollars should not be patented and should be available to all.
  - pavon 1y ago
    Under the Bayh-Dole Act state universities do the exact same thing. They patent their research and license it to private companies. Their discoveries are no more or less open to the public than with private universities.
treis 1y ago
This is somewhat disingenuous. Something like half of the grant is handed over to the University as overhead. Much of that is legit to cover things like labs but a lot of it goes to a cover a massive amount of administrative bloat. Also, nobody really objects to the research that leads directly to stuff private industry can use. That's not what people want to cut.
- ss2003 1y ago
  That is disingenuous. People absolutely want to cut all University research without regard as to what it for.
- xracy 1y ago
  The overhead is what makes research possible. How do you do research without a lab, or a building?
  - SoftTalker 1y ago
    You include expenses for lab and facilities in your grant budget rather than as "overhead" ?
    - xracy 1y ago
      That's not how facilities work or are accounted for. Facilities are common to all of the university. It doesn't make sense to force this individual requirement on each grant when the University has hundreds of ways it is using a given building or lab equipment.
      - drjasonharrison 1y ago
        Are you thinking "facility" == "building" and "rooms"? The lab equipment is constantly evolving, needs repair, maintenance, on-site training. Perhaps you are thinking of a lab bench that is going to last the lifetime of the building and I am thinking of a computer server, 3D scanner, 3D printer, MRI machine (small lab system), etc. My son has taken second year organic chemistry classes that had more computer hardware and software than I ever had in my electrical engineering/computer science classes in the early 1990s. The software might be open source, or might have ongoing software license fees. While those specific teaching labs should be paid for through tuition, imagine similar or more advanced versions in the research labs.
sampo 1y ago
> By and large, what is being withheld are funds for research. I don't know precisely, but I would assume the universities take about 50% to 60% of the granted research funding as administrative overhead, and only what remains goes to the actual research.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]

lowercased 1y ago

It's that last step - 5 - which I think is a missing piece of the discussion. A lot of private company pharma and medical research is often doing the 'last mile' work that started in university research programs. Stuff that looks promising is picked up and commercialized, but there's usually significant work the research people have done before big commercial players take it to market. They're not doing all their research from scratch - they're taking the best bits funded by our government research programs and bringing them to market. Cutting university research will damage the private sector pretty quickly.

ajmurmann 1y ago
It even goes beyond the concrete research that eventually gets commercialized. One pharma startup I am familiar with has much of its research-related leadership and board staffed with very successful current or former academic researchers who used to run their own labs or even departments. We cannot shift skill acquisition like that over night to private industry.

timewizard 1y ago

On #3 "government gets a pretty awesome license" seems disingenuous. From what I've witnessed some specific agencies get to use that license in a rather limited way. It's often not broadly available to the public and commercial rights tend to be reserved to the University. Is that actually what most people would think of as "pretty awesome?" On #4, "more often than not" and "offers great accessible licensing" seems equally disingenuous. Further, why should any of us have to license technology or patents that were primarily funded by tax revenue? Shouldn't that just be automatically and fully open? When the government decides to sequester that knowledge what process do I have to challenge that? On #5, outside of pharmaceutical companies, what are these new GDP growth and returning pipelines that actually get created and impact citizens directly?

trollbridge 1y ago
Yeah, my experience is the patent gets licenced to some private entity that then squeezes a profit of it. The public sure doesn’t “benefit”. I’d prefer to see such funding going to state universities, not private ones.
- amanaplanacanal 1y ago
  The public benefits by access to treatments that wouldn't exist had the research not been done. On the other hand I agree that research funded by tax dollars should not be patented and should be available to all.
- pavon 1y ago
  Under the Bayh-Dole Act state universities do the exact same thing. They patent their research and license it to private companies. Their discoveries are no more or less open to the public than with private universities.

treis 1y ago

This is somewhat disingenuous. Something like half of the grant is handed over to the University as overhead. Much of that is legit to cover things like labs but a lot of it goes to a cover a massive amount of administrative bloat. Also, nobody really objects to the research that leads directly to stuff private industry can use. That's not what people want to cut.

ss2003 1y ago
That is disingenuous. People absolutely want to cut all University research without regard as to what it for.
xracy 1y ago
The overhead is what makes research possible. How do you do research without a lab, or a building?
- SoftTalker 1y ago
  You include expenses for lab and facilities in your grant budget rather than as "overhead" ?
  - xracy 1y ago
    That's not how facilities work or are accounted for. Facilities are common to all of the university. It doesn't make sense to force this individual requirement on each grant when the University has hundreds of ways it is using a given building or lab equipment.
    - drjasonharrison 1y ago
      Are you thinking "facility" == "building" and "rooms"? The lab equipment is constantly evolving, needs repair, maintenance, on-site training. Perhaps you are thinking of a lab bench that is going to last the lifetime of the building and I am thinking of a computer server, 3D scanner, 3D printer, MRI machine (small lab system), etc. My son has taken second year organic chemistry classes that had more computer hardware and software than I ever had in my electrical engineering/computer science classes in the early 1990s. The software might be open source, or might have ongoing software license fees. While those specific teaching labs should be paid for through tuition, imagine similar or more advanced versions in the research labs.

sampo 1y ago

> By and large, what is being withheld are funds for research. I don't know precisely, but I would assume the universities take about 50% to 60% of the granted research funding as administrative overhead, and only what remains goes to the actual research.

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]