Comment by rapatel0 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by rapatel0 | Hacker News Reader

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> I read or heard someplace that at many universities tuition paid by students in the social sciences is effectively subsidizing the STEM fields

I'm very skeptical of this claim.

In fact up until a recent funding method change from the Trump Administration, most grant money was subject to "overhead"--a nebulous nonsensical accounting trick that allowed the university administration to get upwards of 60% of the dollars that are earmarked for grants. If you invent something, the school will take 70% of the revenue from the innovation. Much like VC, some big wins can power the school for years.

Actually, most highly productive research universities use the research as a prestige magnet and marketing tool to help grow endowments and keep up in the US News college rankings.

I would be great if the funding weren't so opaque. We may be able to find accounting info for the public univeristies. I would bet money that, Liberal arts tuition likely goes into administration, endowments, and campus improvements for student life (better food in the dining halls...)

> In fact up until a recent funding method change from the Trump Administration, most grant money was subject to "overhead"--a nebulous nonsensical accounting trick that allowed the university administration to get upwards of 60% of the dollars that are earmarked for grants.

We're better than this here. Don't spread misinformation. First of all overhead is listed as a percentage, such as 55% or 60% or whatever but the university doesn't get that fraction of the total grant. You work up the so called direct costs, ie the line item salaries of the researchers, the reagents, etc. and then the overhead is 60% of that figure. So it would work out to be 38% of the total dollars granted.

It's also not a trick. It's a negotiated amount that is supposed to avoid each grant requesting some amortized fraction of the cost of office space and other necessary but shared expenses.

I and most people agree that's it's possibly too high, but it's ignorant to treat it like a scam.

I and most people agree that's it's possibly too high, but it's ignorant to treat it like a scam.

The fact that it is so high is a scam.

It really depends on the grant. For the larger grants, it may work somewhat like you describe. For the smaller grants, they literally do just take 60% of the money (and complain that it is not enough to administer the grant while providing absolutely no support whatsoever). In theory, it's paying for salary and office space and whatnot, but those are already covered by other budgets.

It's not misinformation. You are repeating a misleading talking point. Here's what happens.

- Professor & students get a grant application for 100K.

- University charges indirects at a ratio (0.55)

- 155K gets transferred from treasury to the university account.

That extra 55K comes from the money that congress allocated for grants, so if congress allocates 1 billion dollars -> 450 million will actually go to professors for research. (less than half).

I don't know about you but the universities I went to were rarely ever building new labs or buildings. Furthermore, those large projects always have state grant money coming out of another funding pool.

Glossing over some details, but the fact of the matter is that it's opaque.

Edit: my last calculation is wrong. I inverted it 350 Million will be allocated for indirects (650 Million for research)

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