An average NIH R01 grant is $600,000 dollars per year for ~5 years. Forgoing a $100m student center would net you 33 projects. For reference, Stanford had 1000 ongoing projects for FY 2025
Most of that "grift" goes to salaries for professors, staff, for the very expensive lab space, pensions and health care for the professors, etc.
These rates are all highly negotiated and highly justified down to details. The average professor may not know how much overhead goes into actually running lab space and paying for all the infrastructure that's necessary for research, but it's not insubstantial.
People who know nothing about that side of the business, even professors at universities, say "that's outrageous, let's cut it" without even understanding where the money goes. It's a very DOGE view, and a disastrous one to act on without first understanding the particulars.
"administrative grift" as you call it is on top of awarded amounts, not a part of it. If the University is forced to spend all $3M themselves and also forego the operating overhead, what you'll get isn't more projects but fewer projects and also smaller, less capable research organizations.
Which is what some people want, but other people recognize that more research, bigger projects, and large, world-class academic organizations capable of conducting it are part of maintaining strong national security. Such activities are not cheap, they are also not profitable, but again because they are crucial for national security, it's the government's prerogative and obligation to help fund such activities, even if you consider it grift.
The increase in F&A rates is due to the facilities portion, which in the "before times" was negotiated every 4 years with DHHS and had concrete data in the negotiation process to help ensure it was fair. The admin portion for universities has been capped at 26% since 1991.
I see comments like this where destructionists have their simplistic bullshit releasing on full-spread, and it reminds me to go back and upvote the article. HN is one of the few places where this feel-good nonsense actually gets rejected, giving us the possibility of discussing how to move past this societal mental illness.
More nonsense - indirect costs fund shared facilities, equipment, supplies, and data resources. To the extent that there is bloat, it funds the compliance that they are required by law to do. I would support simplifying this to reduce regulatory cost; I do not support paranoid whining.
Which tuition are you referring to? Nameplate tuition is like the sticker price on a new car; few to no people pay it. Net tuition is the number that actually matters, and it's been largely flat the last 8 years.
Overseas students are not immigrants. They are on student visas (and most likely from very wealthy families... at least most of the ones I knew at Purdue were).
It is in the United States best interest to retain the best students as they graduate and create a system to promote student visa to green card to naturalization, but only a very few do.
Mostly, foreign students are price gouged by our universities to prop up a failing business model and make it more difficult for citizens to afford higher education.
Sure, it's in the United States' interest to retain the best foreign students (and in many students' interest to study in a country which will permit them to live and work there after their study). That doesn't mean the current administration is necessarily inclined to act this way
International student enrolment is down 17% this year, because the administration chose to take a broadly similar approach to student visas as they did to immigration, with a "pause" on interviews and lots of revocations, plus of course the concern their lawful student visa status isn't a guarantee they won't get taken off to processing centres by ICE thugs with quotas to hit. Other bright ideas the administration proposed with include a four year student visa limit to rule out the possibility of completing a PhD in a normal time frame. That's gonna hurt universities using the foreign students to prop their business up, and citizens who'll have to pick up their tab instead if they want their courses to continue...
That is the mind hack. People will always assume that the administration has the United States best interest in mind. If people can drop that assumption, they might make a beginning with understanding the firehose of seemingly erratic policy.
The US is a resource to be stripped, the interest in mind is self-interest. "Make us great again!" Back to the gilded age, whatever it takes.
> It is in the United States best interest to retain the best students
Yeah? Tell that to the US government.
As it stands, foreign student enrollment has dropped precipitously year-on-year. The international students are scared, and with good reason.
If ICE happens to roll up to campus, do you really think they'll be checking each student's visa status? Not on your life. They'll just round up everyone who doesn't look white enough, and if they're very, very lucky, they might just get sent back home in a speedy manner. If they're not, they'll get put in camps for indeterminate amounts of time, denied any access to the legal system, and treated worse than animals.
They need to cut funding until academia stops gamifying the research process. Aka cheating. It's bizarre to hear the stories that come out of this twisted world and then seeing them expect to keep getting paid the same.
It's bizarre to hear the words that come out of this administration's mouth on... Almost any topic, and then see an actual person actually arguing that anything those people say or do needs to be defended.
Have you considered holding it to the same standard you want to hold your enemies to?
An average NIH R01 grant is $600,000 dollars per year for ~5 years. Forgoing a $100m student center would net you 33 projects. For reference, Stanford had 1000 ongoing projects for FY 2025
If universities fund it themselves they might forego some of the usual 30% administrative grift and we get some 40 projects out of it!
Most of that "grift" goes to salaries for professors, staff, for the very expensive lab space, pensions and health care for the professors, etc.
These rates are all highly negotiated and highly justified down to details. The average professor may not know how much overhead goes into actually running lab space and paying for all the infrastructure that's necessary for research, but it's not insubstantial.
People who know nothing about that side of the business, even professors at universities, say "that's outrageous, let's cut it" without even understanding where the money goes. It's a very DOGE view, and a disastrous one to act on without first understanding the particulars.
1 reply →
"administrative grift" as you call it is on top of awarded amounts, not a part of it. If the University is forced to spend all $3M themselves and also forego the operating overhead, what you'll get isn't more projects but fewer projects and also smaller, less capable research organizations.
Which is what some people want, but other people recognize that more research, bigger projects, and large, world-class academic organizations capable of conducting it are part of maintaining strong national security. Such activities are not cheap, they are also not profitable, but again because they are crucial for national security, it's the government's prerogative and obligation to help fund such activities, even if you consider it grift.
1 reply →
The increase in F&A rates is due to the facilities portion, which in the "before times" was negotiated every 4 years with DHHS and had concrete data in the negotiation process to help ensure it was fair. The admin portion for universities has been capped at 26% since 1991.
I see comments like this where destructionists have their simplistic bullshit releasing on full-spread, and it reminds me to go back and upvote the article. HN is one of the few places where this feel-good nonsense actually gets rejected, giving us the possibility of discussing how to move past this societal mental illness.
5 replies →
More nonsense - indirect costs fund shared facilities, equipment, supplies, and data resources. To the extent that there is bloat, it funds the compliance that they are required by law to do. I would support simplifying this to reduce regulatory cost; I do not support paranoid whining.
3 replies →
Legitimate question: why don't you think universities already do this? It's not exactly a novel idea.
It can be proved by deduction based on the rate of increase in tuition
Which tuition are you referring to? Nameplate tuition is like the sticker price on a new car; few to no people pay it. Net tuition is the number that actually matters, and it's been largely flat the last 8 years.
4 replies →
I didn't ask you to prove it. I asked why it wasn't already happening.
This is not how research grants work.
> Maybe colleges should use some of that tuition money
That's going away too with the ban on immigration. A large amount of high margin tuition is from overseas students.
Overseas students are not immigrants. They are on student visas (and most likely from very wealthy families... at least most of the ones I knew at Purdue were).
It is in the United States best interest to retain the best students as they graduate and create a system to promote student visa to green card to naturalization, but only a very few do.
Mostly, foreign students are price gouged by our universities to prop up a failing business model and make it more difficult for citizens to afford higher education.
Sure, it's in the United States' interest to retain the best foreign students (and in many students' interest to study in a country which will permit them to live and work there after their study). That doesn't mean the current administration is necessarily inclined to act this way
International student enrolment is down 17% this year, because the administration chose to take a broadly similar approach to student visas as they did to immigration, with a "pause" on interviews and lots of revocations, plus of course the concern their lawful student visa status isn't a guarantee they won't get taken off to processing centres by ICE thugs with quotas to hit. Other bright ideas the administration proposed with include a four year student visa limit to rule out the possibility of completing a PhD in a normal time frame. That's gonna hurt universities using the foreign students to prop their business up, and citizens who'll have to pick up their tab instead if they want their courses to continue...
1 reply →
That is the mind hack. People will always assume that the administration has the United States best interest in mind. If people can drop that assumption, they might make a beginning with understanding the firehose of seemingly erratic policy.
The US is a resource to be stripped, the interest in mind is self-interest. "Make us great again!" Back to the gilded age, whatever it takes.
> Overseas students are not immigrants.
> It is in the United States best interest to retain the best students
Yeah? Tell that to the US government.
As it stands, foreign student enrollment has dropped precipitously year-on-year. The international students are scared, and with good reason.
If ICE happens to roll up to campus, do you really think they'll be checking each student's visa status? Not on your life. They'll just round up everyone who doesn't look white enough, and if they're very, very lucky, they might just get sent back home in a speedy manner. If they're not, they'll get put in camps for indeterminate amounts of time, denied any access to the legal system, and treated worse than animals.
No, the Trump administration needs to not cut funding for science that disagrees with their worldview.
They need to cut funding until academia stops gamifying the research process. Aka cheating. It's bizarre to hear the stories that come out of this twisted world and then seeing them expect to keep getting paid the same.
Do you genuinely believe that every single research lab is cheating and should thus be punished across the board?
1 reply →
It's bizarre to hear the words that come out of this administration's mouth on... Almost any topic, and then see an actual person actually arguing that anything those people say or do needs to be defended.
Have you considered holding it to the same standard you want to hold your enemies to?
1 reply →