National Institutes of Health cuts support to universities

https://arstechnica.com/science/2025/02/new-nih-policy-will-slash-support-money-to-research-universities/

by dangle1 • 1 year ago

38 39 1 year ago

dekhn4• 1 year ago

The overhead being charged at a lot of these places was obscene (and variable- it all depended on the specific institution). A fixed rate of 15% seems low, but reasonable. I expect the admin especially at places that charge a premium will be furious.

Fomite8• 1 year ago

15% is wildly far from reasonable. More than that, it's an entirely made up number.

dekhn4• 1 year ago

When I was an academic, I did all my work in the cloud. I didn't use copy paper, or even really need to be in the office (it had slower networking, and less comfortable chairs). The university had a multi-billion dollar endowment and got billions from the state to run its educational mission. Why should I be raising 50% on top of my money (which was so high, NIH often wanted to give money to people at "cheaper" universities).

xqcgrek23• 1 year ago

It is not made up, it is what private foundations allow for grantees overhead.

nxobject2• 1 year ago

Maybe big private institutions will do fine. But this will be devastating for smaller institutions – especially public ones – that have had to deal with declining enrollment for years.

I work at a small state access university, without a meaningful endowment, that has traditionally had ~48% indirects. The majority of those go to research administration (e.g. research integrity, human subjects protection) and department general funds. Don't worry about facilities: we will literally be trying to figure out whether to cut journal subscriptions or startup funds for new hires, since we can't touch compliance.

Of course, it's not as if Team Red cared that much about universities anyway, or medicine, or biology...

acdha3• 1 year ago

I think this very much depends on the field. The researchers I know are describing it as devastating because the type of research they do depends on things like animal facilities which aren’t cheap. Fortunately, we don’t need any biomedical research since drinking raw milk will solve everything.

dekhn4• 1 year ago

Often, when you look at those animal facilities run by universities through indirect costs, they are often not efficient. And NIH provides granting mechanisms that last for several years and allow for capital building. Ideally (although I wouldn't expect this to happen with the current admin) NIH could give more money to investigators. But I would argue that in many cases, things like animal facilities should be centralized and housed in only a few locations.

It's a complicated situation and I can't speak for every scientist, but I certainly saw tons of waste (closet clusters that were "free" for the investigator because the university paid for it... through overhead... adminned by grad students since they were "paid for" by training grants.) Similar complaints about wet labs. After working in that environment and moving to industry, I've seen what infrastructure built around efficiency can achieve.

Fomite8• 1 year ago

Since a lot of people on HN don't know how indirect costs work, especially for the NIH:

Grant proposals don't cover things that don't directly cover the project. Journal subscriptions, facilities, copy paper, administrative staff, etc. all aren't eligible, and so get rolled into the vague notion of indirect rates.

When an NIH grant is awarded for a particular direct cost amount, the indirect rate is then added on. So for my institution, if I get a $100,000 grant, my institution gets $153,000, because we have a 53% indirect rate. These are periodically renegotiated with the Federal government, and used widely.

Private research companies can and do just tuck this into their costs, but universities aren't allowed to do that.

A 15% rate is, to be blunt, catastrophic. It's "Every University in the U.S. Loses Money on Every Single NIH Grant" levels of bad.

And yes, this is the rate a lot of foundations charge. That's not because it's a reasonable rate - it's because it's a charitable foundation, and we all sort of indulge them because of their missions, and their own need to be efficient. But they're also a minuscule amount of the funding landscape, and often small grants. We tell ourselves its find - they're worthy causes, and loss leaders, etc. But applying that to the NIH will be a massive blow to biomedical research in the United States.

mhalle• 1 year ago

Your comments are quite good and accurate. I would add that funding from private foundations is in many cases only viable because NIH overhead is paying for the supporting infrastructure. Very few biomedical researchers are supported solely by private funding (including the building and lab facilities).

These changes also directly impact research hospitals, not just universities.

That doesn't mean indirect costs shouldn't be reformed. This is just simply the most disruptive possible way to do it.

Fomite8• 1 year ago

Yeah, this will hit research hospitals, organizations like RTI, etc.

And yeah, the rates private foundations pay is enabled by the NIH rates, and also that the NIH makes up the bulk of the funding in the first place. There's an argument - that I'm sympathetic to - that they shouldn't get a discount and the rate is the rate, but that's a very different reform than what we're seeing now.

pentel-0_5• 1 year ago

Yep. I worked in a biomedical research department. Getting funding was always difficult, requiring 2 full-time grant writers for the government stuff and the dept chair who split their time between raising from private individuals, corporations, and all other sources. Government has strict rules about what money can and can't be spent on. Take equipment given by the government: often times, it would gather dust and couldn't be disposed of, despite being obsolete and replaced by something else, because of government red tape. Getting grants is very competitive and there's rarely enough money to cover all of the ordinary functions like salaries of an admin person, office supplies, or other overhead things needed for students, faculty, and staff to operate a functional department.

The losers of this will be patients of the entire world, the slow down of advancements in medicine and STEM fields of all kinds, and the sucking sound of brains leaving for other countries.

EA-3167• 1 year ago

This is a pointlessly destructive move that will save insignificant amounts of money, while grossly hampering important research in the US. If we're looking for "efficiencies" in government take a look at healthcare, look at what insurance companies are allowed to charge, what hospitals charge insurance in turn. It's a bonanza of cash that's justified in vague free market terms, while the taxpayer is stuck with a bill in the trillions. Far more than education or NIH grants, more than military spending, healthcare in this country simply robs people blind. The focus is often on bankrupted, uninsured people, but the truth is that far more is just skimmed off the top.

throwaway57522• 1 year ago

https://bsky.app/profile/kgandersen.bsky.social/post/3lhmscc...

"This will be the end of American excellence in science.

Universities will struggle and many (likely most) will terminate their research programs.

Independent research institutions will not be able to survive this."

xqcgrek23• 1 year ago

About time. Research foundations like Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation rarely allow more than 15-20% in overhead from grantees.

Research universities are bloated and epically inefficient, and hopefully soon go the way of Blockbuster.

frigidwalnut3• 1 year ago

Why do you think that research universities should go bankrupt? What do you think should replace their function in society?

xqcgrek23• 1 year ago

People doing research funded by grants, rather than having 50% of their grant leeched off by a bloated administrative complex coasting on pedigree.

frigidwalnut3• 1 year ago

This is a huge cut. Back of the envelope calculations for UCLA (a big research university with public finance information): $200M cut in operating revenue.

In 2023, UCLA had $270M in indirect costs [1] and they negotiated a rate of 57% with the NIH [2]. So, they had about $473M in direct costs. The new rate would be 15%, which is ~$71M. $270M-$71M = $200M.

[1] Page 24: https://ucla.app.box.com/v/acct-pdf-AFR-22-23 [2] https://ocga.research.ucla.edu/facilities-and-administrative...

(Reposting from a less popular posting)

throwaway57522• 1 year ago

https://bsky.app/profile/joshtpm.bsky.social/post/3lhmxzwceq...

"From what I hear from multiple people in the space, the latest NIH indirect costs for medical research grants will basically mean the end most academic medical centers"

silexia• 1 year ago

University administrations are extraordinarily bloated and badly in need of cuts. Glad to see this happening.

contemporary3432• 1 year ago

The worst part is that it is immediate and retroactive to ongoing grants. This will immediately cause every single academic and medical research center to have an unsustainable deficit. It will simply cost too much to actually have researchers do the grants. They might return money to NIH and lay off faculty annd grad students.

I anm almost certain this will get a TRO from a federal judge while it’s litigated given how insane this is.

i_am_proteus• 1 year ago

This is not true, you might have misread the guidance- it's retroactive to the date of the decision (7 February) and not retroactive to other existing grants (https://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/notice-files/NOT-OD-25-0...)

Last paragraph:

For any new grant issued, and for all existing grants to IHEs retroactive to the date of issuance of this Supplemental Guidance, award recipients are subject to a 15 percent indirect cost rate. This rate will allow grant recipients a reasonable and realistic recovery of indirect costs while helping NIH ensure that grant funds are, to the maximum extent possible, spent on furthering its mission. This policy shall be applied to all current grants for go forward expenses from February 10, 2025 forward as well as for all new grants issued. We will not be applying this cap retroactively back to the initial date of issuance of current grants to IHEs, although we believe we would have the authority to do so under 45 CFR 75.414(c).

contemporary3432• 1 year ago

Are you familiar with how organizations have annual budgets? Doing it with zero notice in the middle of a fiscal year will be chaos. This is purely an attack.

Notice how no one is going after the F&A (indirect) rates for DOD R&D contractors…

nunez• 1 year ago

Is it possible that this is being done to increase private influence over public research? Private entities could simply raise their cap on indirect costs...if conditions are met.

National Institutes of Health cuts support to universities

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