However, all research institutions take a cut of grant money in what is usually called "Facilities and Administration" cost. My undergrad rate was 50% of the proposed sum. Obviously the exact rate varies, but the fee remains.
Ex. If a professor is writes a proposal for 1M. When the funding agency awards it they tack on another 1M for the institution.
This is why "expensive" research is favored in universities, over theoretical work. A big part of tenure review is how much money you have brought in in funding, because that's a direct measure of how much money you made the institution.
So 75M is more like 30M-40M of directly funded research, with the rest going to the institutions.
To zeroth order, it works out to roughly 30 small research groups for 5 years.
At a place like Berkeley, where I did my PhD (but not in anything quantum related), a PhD student and a postdoc both cost a professor something like $75k/year in salary and benefits (money not spent on postdoc salary basically goes to student tuition). Add in the professors salary as well (which is often substantially supported by grants), figure $150k/year for the prof. So in people costs alone, let’s say 1 professor and 2 trainees, that’s about $300k/year, or $1.5M/5 years. Multiply by 30 professors supported, and you’re at $45M, which is 60% of the $75M. And yeah, this is assuming that experiments are free.
Now is 20-30 professors a lot? If sufficiently narrow and esteemed, absolutely. There were 29 people at the 1927 Solvay Conference. Give them an extra couple months where they aren’t sweating a grant, and that’s a lot of time to think.
Agreed. This is what you get when you measure performance in terms of profits.
To quote Major General Smedley Butler:
"A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the
people. Only a small "inside" group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the
very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes."
Higher education is a rachet.
Students pay ever-higher tuition, which at some level is backstopped by the government. If you don't go to college and pursue prestigious degrees the job market will be inaccessible, beyond basic skill entry level.
Graduate students are exploited laborers for the promise of a PhD and a letter of recommendation for a postdoc. Drawing from a global pool of talent for cheap research labor. If you don't do everything your advisor says you will lose your visa, or not get a publication and your academic career is dead-on-arrival.
Professors are in an environment that encourages pursuing expensive application-based research and high impact publications to pad their resumes for tenure. If you don't rake in the money and publish in "prestigious" journal (usually the walled off ones) you will not be considered for tenure, a raise, etc.
Tax dollars fund research institutions that take their generous "administration" fees and then hand over findings to walled garden journals. If you don't fund research we will not make the breakthroughs that gave us out "comfortable" way of life.
In the US, student athletes (until recently) could not profit off their likeness and all the money went to the school.
At the end of the day, the team of MBAs and administrators make fat salaries. This wouldn't be so bad if institutions used the revenue to improve education and dissemination of knowledge. Instead, they build fancy stadiums and raise tuition.
I think these overhead numbers are quoted as the percentage on top of what gets spent, rather than the percentage of the incoming cash. 50% overhead means that buying a 1M machine involves giving 500K to the institution.
However, all research institutions take a cut of grant money in what is usually called "Facilities and Administration" cost. My undergrad rate was 50% of the proposed sum. Obviously the exact rate varies, but the fee remains.
Ex. If a professor is writes a proposal for 1M. When the funding agency awards it they tack on another 1M for the institution.
This is why "expensive" research is favored in universities, over theoretical work. A big part of tenure review is how much money you have brought in in funding, because that's a direct measure of how much money you made the institution.
So 75M is more like 30M-40M of directly funded research, with the rest going to the institutions.
EDIT: Berkeley's F&A goes at high as 60%. https://spo.berkeley.edu/policy/fa.html#rates