Surprised to discover that MIT's indirect costs (i.e. for facilities and administration) on research grants recently crossed 50% (jumps to 55% in 2022). ras.mit.edu/facilities-and
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Then departments take a cut[1] and there's a 10% fund overhead[2] for many expenses!
I knew grants had a lot of university-mandated overhead built in, but I didn't realize it was anything like this much.
[1] ras.mit.edu/rates/allocati
[2] ras.mit.edu/rates/fund-acc
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I really don't know how to evaluate such costs: facilities are very important; these fees support departmental research funds, which is great; etc etc—maybe such a high percentage really is best! I'd certainly like a "campus".
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Looking back at 2010, though, the rate was 68%. It actually fell to 50% over the following ten years, and is only now climbing again. That's very interesting, and seems to run against a "cost disease" trend one might have naively inferred.
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50% is pretty low. Indirects cover all aspects of research costs that cannot be assigned to a single research grant. For example, building and facilities maintenance. Not sure how that cut happened. NIH adds indirects on top of budget. NSF subtracts from.
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