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Universities have two roles: education and research. The funding is overwhelmingly for research and it's going to those that provide the best return on investment. Should cancer research funding go to your local community college?

Educating the best and brightest is also of special value, but that is beside the point.

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I disagree -- the funding isn't ROI based at all. Heck NIH doesn't even really audit how well the funds were spent, how could they? They don't even really assess if the research had impact, save for counting journal articles and impact factors, which are in themselves poor proxies for quality of work (and easily gamed).

What makes you say all that? Grants are hard to get, highly competitive with difficult standards.

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