The National Institutes of Health announced a new policy Friday to cap a type of funding that supports medical research at universities, a decision that most likely will leave many with a large budget gap. The policy targets $9 billion in so-called indirect funds that the N.I.H. sends along with direct funds to support research into basic science and treatments for diseases ranging from cancer to Alzheimer’s to diabetes.
Currently, some universities get 50 percent or more of the amount of a grant in indirect funds, meaning a $1 million research award would come with $500,000 to maintain facilities and equipment and pay support staff. The new policy would cap those indirect funds at 15 percent.
“I think it’s going to destroy research universities in the short term, and I don’t know after that,” said Dr. David A. Baltrus, a University of Arizona associate professor whose lab is developing antibiotics for crops. “They rely on the money. They budget for the money. The universities were making decisions expecting the money to be there.”
Dr. Baltrus said that his research is focused on efforts such as keeping E. coli bacteria out of crops like sprouts and lettuce. He said the policy change would force his university to make cuts to support staff and overhead.
An N.I.H. social media post said the change could save the federal government as much as $4 billion and sharply cut payments to Harvard, Yale and Johns Hopkins Universities, which have overhead rates above 60 percent of their grant sums.
Senator Patty Murray, a Democrat of Washington, said in a statement late Friday that the move could “dismantle the biomedical research system, stifle the development of new cures for disease, and rip treatments away from patients in need.”
She said the change could shut down some clinical trials at institutions in her state, such as the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center and University of Washington.
Comments
If say a university has an agreement for a 60% IDC rate (all of those agreements are negotiated, backed by required calculations, that include what the IDC rate is), here's how it goes. Say for simplicity's sake the direct cost of the project comes to $100k. The 60% IDCs (less any deductions, of which there are several listed in the CFR on the subject) are added to the $100k direct cost to make total cost $160k. Of the 160k, 60k is the actual IDC amount, or 37.5% of the total -- not 60%.
In the world I used to be involved in, that of public land management agencies, there's a membership system known as Cooperative Ecosystems Studies Units, including fed agencies, universities, ngo's, and others, with a declared rate of 17.5% across the board. (Bruce Babbitt, Sec. of Interior under Billy Jeff Clinton, founded the system in the 1990s, to induce cooperation and to limit IDCs.)
I'd think the Musk Rat crew shouldn't go a penny below that for any grantee, and should study the calculations that justify higher rates for some grantees before tearing into a fairly decent system "like seagulls attacking a bag of French fries" (Colbert's description).
Yes, some universities probably go too far; renegotiating the rate is the way to change that, not by an edict on high from a pack of morons who have no idea what they're doing. They should acknowledge that this system is about doing things that are provided for in law, and they're saving the gov from having to hire more people and build specialized facilities to do them.
So agency grantors have a vested interest in the grantee's continued existence, and that's what IDCs are for. The Rats/Seagulls appear to be trying to starve grantees of $ they need to stay alive and kicking during and after they do the current job they want them to do. Not smart.