I don't think it will take very long for truly esteemed Harvard faculty, and alumni to demand a correction, if the administrators persist in this non-meritorious approach. I have colleagues in the Paulson school who are doing world-class research with outstanding graduate students; trust me they are not for this nonsense. They want to hi…
I don't think it will take very long for truly esteemed Harvard faculty, and alumni to demand a correction, if the administrators persist in this non-meritorious approach. I have colleagues in the Paulson school who are doing world-class research with outstanding graduate students; trust me they are not for this nonsense. They want to hire the best and the brightest. That is why Harvard was Harvard. But let the leadership do this for a while, then see the results, and I am certain there will be a significant correction. But the federal government should not be involved, unless they break the law, and quotas are unlawful.
No. Their negotiated Facilities and Administration (Overhead) rate is about 70%. But it does not apply to all the direct cost items. So imagine a contract or grant with direct costs of say $1 million for three years. Since the F&A rate does not apply to all the lines of expense, you can guessitmate the overhead cost as say 50% of the direct costs, or $500,000. Thus the total grant or contract cost to the government would be $ 1.5 million. That makes the F&A cost about 1/3 or $0.33 per dollar direct. Remember this rate is negotiated with the cognitive agency - DHHS for Harvard. Other Schools negotiate with DoD...If this is reduced to 15%, schools will put more direct costs back into the cost proposal, which means negotiations will be done on every contract and grant. I know you won't believe this, but schools lose money overall on research (as most also do on DI athletics). Facilities and administrative costs are not fully covered by the negotiated F&A rates. But bringing down admin costs is not easy due to all sorts of government requirements. Compliance measures = jobs...not a good dynamic, but one party loves it.
Thank you for the clarifying comment. I run an Aerospace company that has DoD work so have some idea of the regulatory hoops you have to jump through. If the research is valuable I'd say we are getting value for our money. Reducing the regulatory load would be ideal.
Depends on the agency. NSF required applicants to apply the indirect cost rate to the proposal, so a $300,000 proposal would include about $133,000 in indirect costs. A different $300,000 proposal to the NIH would have a bit over $200,000 in indirect costs awarded, if the grant was funded in full -- and it usually wasn't funded in full.
I don't think it will take very long for truly esteemed Harvard faculty, and alumni to demand a correction, if the administrators persist in this non-meritorious approach. I have colleagues in the Paulson school who are doing world-class research with outstanding graduate students; trust me they are not for this nonsense. They want to hire the best and the brightest. That is why Harvard was Harvard. But let the leadership do this for a while, then see the results, and I am certain there will be a significant correction. But the federal government should not be involved, unless they break the law, and quotas are unlawful.
Is it true that Harvard takes 69 cents of every grant dollar for administrative overhead?
No. Their negotiated Facilities and Administration (Overhead) rate is about 70%. But it does not apply to all the direct cost items. So imagine a contract or grant with direct costs of say $1 million for three years. Since the F&A rate does not apply to all the lines of expense, you can guessitmate the overhead cost as say 50% of the direct costs, or $500,000. Thus the total grant or contract cost to the government would be $ 1.5 million. That makes the F&A cost about 1/3 or $0.33 per dollar direct. Remember this rate is negotiated with the cognitive agency - DHHS for Harvard. Other Schools negotiate with DoD...If this is reduced to 15%, schools will put more direct costs back into the cost proposal, which means negotiations will be done on every contract and grant. I know you won't believe this, but schools lose money overall on research (as most also do on DI athletics). Facilities and administrative costs are not fully covered by the negotiated F&A rates. But bringing down admin costs is not easy due to all sorts of government requirements. Compliance measures = jobs...not a good dynamic, but one party loves it.
I believe you when you say that they lose money on research, but does that include all the backend profits when patents and other IP pay off?
Thank you for the clarifying comment. I run an Aerospace company that has DoD work so have some idea of the regulatory hoops you have to jump through. If the research is valuable I'd say we are getting value for our money. Reducing the regulatory load would be ideal.
Depends on the agency. NSF required applicants to apply the indirect cost rate to the proposal, so a $300,000 proposal would include about $133,000 in indirect costs. A different $300,000 proposal to the NIH would have a bit over $200,000 in indirect costs awarded, if the grant was funded in full -- and it usually wasn't funded in full.