"In her Feb. 25 op-ed "A Compromise on University Funding," Harvard Prof. Maya Sen recapitulates the mantra of many university administrators, deans and chancellors that indirect caps "imperil research." This claim is dubious to some of us physician scientists who hold federal research grants.
For example, of my $3 million Defense Department clinical trial grant relating to spinal-cord injury, nearly 40% of these taxpayer funds won't be spent on research. They will go to university and institutional administration "indirect" fees. At least in my clinical trial, none of these indirect fees will be spent on enrollment, consent, data collection, data analysis, investigator salaries or any other direct execution of research. They will be spent opaquely on compliance with "costly regulations" and the salaries of administrators who even Ms. Sen admits have multiplied to uncomfortable levels.
Ms. Sen suggests that a federal cap on indirect rates is unnecessary and that universities could simply commit to "addressing administrative bloat." Good luck having university administrators relinquishing a gravy train worth hundreds of millions of dollars without being compelled to do so.
At the very least these universities owe taxpayers transparency on how much of these funds are spent on administrator salaries and actual infrastructure. If a grant is paying for such things as utilities, rent, asset depreciation and administrative staff, it should be clearly laid out in the budget for all to see.
Prof. Sanjay S. Dhall, M.D.
University of California, Los Angeles
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Ms. Sen argues that a 15% research cost cap is too strict. I think it's not strict enough. The indirect rate for research grants should be cut to zero, for at least three reasons:
First, grants have become a source of income, meaning faculty are evaluated by an irrelevant metric. Not "What have they found?" but "How much money do they bring in?"
Second, private foundations give many grants with no overhead. Universities are happy to accept them. Administrators continue to claim that all awards cost them money, even as they urge faculty to get them. I recall one STEM chairman complaining about a productive faculty member who managed to do his work without any external support.
Third, in the absence of overhead, what is to prevent the administration from billing the award holder for the use of university facilities, expenses that could be added to the direct costs? The researcher is surely in a better position to judge how fair those costs are.
John Staddon
Durham, N.C." [1]
1.The NIH's 15% Cost Cap Isn't Strict Enough. Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y.. 04 Mar 2025: A16.
