I’m not part of academia but was heavily involved in funding because of my position in student government while still in college.

While I won’t argue there isn’t waste (what endeavor doesn’t have waste?) it’s an incredibly tiny percentage (except in cases where there was actual fraud, which we also discovered and the Feds prosecuted and convicted people for).

The irony is that academia is so afraid of “waste” that I wouldn’t be surprised if colleges spend more money on the auditing and the compliances, etc than the actual waste they prevent.