The federal government should update the process by which its agencies negotiate reimbursements to universities for the indirect costs associated with federal research grants, and the government should apply the process more consistently across institutions, says a new report by the Government Accountability Office.
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3 Responses to U.S. Government Urged to Rethink Policies for Paying Indirect Costs of Research
davi2665 - September 10, 2010 at 10:18 am
Indirect costs are legitimate shared or pooled costs that are necessary for carrying out research activities. Some of the general research services that cross departmental and disciplinary lines need to be paid for with indirect costs, and not placed on individual grants in nickel and dime amounts. The REAL 800 pound gorilla in the room related to NIH funding is the salaries paid to investigators (faculty mainly) for their own investigator-initiated research projects. I understand the need to pay salaries in the context of a government contract or competitive bidding for a RFP whose specific aims are already delineated by the sponsoring agency. But for investigator-initiated projects (a vast majority of RO1s, R23s, and others), the investigator salaries eat up a huge proportion of the direct cost budget, not to mention the overhead which is piled on top of those salaries. If these salaries were passed back to the universities, then they would have to make REAL decisions about strategic research directions instead of bringing endless pressure on faculty to “bring in their salary” with whatever project de jour is in vogue for grant awards. Such a policy would probably double the number of awards that NIH could make, and would stop the ridiculous process of elite universities building mega-departments entirely on soft money as de facto subdivisions of NIH. If someone wants salary from NIH, they should be required to become federal employees and actually work for NIH.
physicsprof - September 10, 2010 at 11:07 am
David2665, but for those of us who derive 2/11 of our income from federal grants (NIH, NSF, DOE) that would result in almost 20% of reduction in salary. I am not saying that you are wrong in denying us our current standard of living, but such a move would definitely result in some changes to principal investigators’ research productivity as some of us will definitely opt for more consulting or paid teaching work in the summer, (as a side effect displacing even more adjuncts frm academia). Just make sure that the net effect is in the positive before making any changes.
centurio54 - September 10, 2010 at 12:06 pm
I think David2665 was addressing the issue of institutions relying on soft money for salaries of investigators in general. Perhaps research productivity would drop for some. However, I think it would be better to have more NIH grant-funded researchers (and a corresponding overall increase in productivity that likely would result), even if that means cutting back on soft-monied positions.