It's true in the sense that at least some of the faculty members will be bringing in a lot of money into the department. In my department, I know that there's a

It's true in the sense that at least some of the faculty members will be bringing in a lot of money into the department. In my department, I know that there's a few professors who either from large funding grants or contracts bring in the majority of research funds. The university (and consequently the faculty and department) gets a percentage of that funding for its own budget. The rest of the faculty in the department combined don't bring in nearly as much money as those few with large research grants.