Hacker News Reader

Are there no caps on admin overhead for grants? (it's been awhile since I've been close to academia)

At least in the US, an institution’s “facilities and administrative” F&A rate gets negotiated with the Federal government every four or five years.

I know of some institutions with F&A rates at or above 70%!! I presume that an institution trying to negotiate a higher F&A rate than this would have some significant pushback!

70% is not that high these days -- there are institutions (normally non-university-affiliated research institutions like the Salk Institute that still apply for NIH and NSF grants) have overheads of 90%! It's important to realize that overheads aren't taken out of the grant given to the researcher, they are added to it. So if a researcher gets a $100K grant at institution with 70% overhead, the institution gets $170K.

Many grant giving institutions limit what they are willing to pay. For example, from my understanding the European research council will only pay 25% even if you university demands more.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com