Half is taken by the university? How does that work?
I wish I was joking, but a friend who works at a Uni was recently complaining of their budget being affected by (mandatory) things like that.
Open up all federal grants -- especially NSF grants -- to anyone with credentials or experience necessary to PI (so, a PhD or equivalent industry experience). Broaden the reviewer pool so that each panel is at least 51% non-Professor expert citizens.
I can do a LOT of advising and conduct a LOT of research with close to 0% overhead. But most NSF grants are only possible to get if you attach yourself to a university, and at that point it's just not worth the effort. Everyone loses, except for the academic industry, which gets heinously immoral labor laws exceptions so that TT professors and admins can retire-in-place on the taxpayer's dime in their mid 30s.
What possible actual reason does the NSF have for requiring research work to be done at universities?
Spoken like someone whose never done research. I’d love to hear what kind of research you think you can do at 0% overhead. No one can do anything at 0% overhead, are you serious?
A big problem is they don't always get all the money they apply for, and so with the added overhead there's sometimes very little left to do actual science.
I worked at a startup and between the rent for our office and our individual rents, like 80% of the VC money went into landlord pockets.
Also there are plenty of “tax breaks” you can get so that you don’t have to pay so much. Capital expenditures will be taxed at 0%, so you can get your overall rate down significantly.
I believe Stanford is 60%. My university is 54%.
Here is an explanation for the justification of this: https://spo.berkeley.edu/guide/fa.html
It does certainly feel excessive as an academic. I've never seen actual tracking of where the F&A money goes in terms of a quantifiable breakdown, e.g., what fraction goes to university accounting for doing their needed work for supporting a sponsored project, what amount goes toward electricity, etc. Universities always seem to be negotiating with the Federal government to raise the rate. When I was at an institution with a 45% rate, though, it let me stretch my grants a lot further by allowing me to fund more students.