Against a Tax Increase on Berkeley Students

Re:Against a Tax Increase on Berkeley Students by bradleyjg on Wednesday November 08, 2017 @02:22PM (#15655969)

> I do realize that many commentators on HN believe that university research is scam, does not create value, and graduate students who choose to do a PhD are willingly making irresponsible financial decisions

I'm not taking that position at all. Here's how I understand the current situation. A grant proposal would say something like:

  $1,000,000 Lab Equipment and reagents
  $250,000 Post-Docs
  $150,000 PI
  $300,000 Phd students tuition waivers
  ----------
  $1,700,000
  x      1.2 university imposed overhead
  ----------
  $2,040,000

The grantor writes a check for $2,040,000. Of that the university gets $300,000 (for tuition) + $340,000 (overhead) = $640,000. The PI doles out the rest.

If this law were to pass the grant would instead be written up as:

  $1,000,000 Lab Equipment and reagents
  $250,000 Post-Docs
  $150,000 PI
  ----------
  $1,400,000
  x    1.457 university imposed overhead
  ----------
  $2,040,000

The university would get $640,000 and the PI would dole out the rest.

The grantors could decide not to agree to this second grant, while they would to the first, but they have no good reason to do that. From their perspective it's the same thing.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Against a Tax Increase on Berkeley Students by secabeen on Wednesday November 08, 2017 @02:34PM (#15656087)

Close. Many universities don't charge overhead (which is usually 50%+, not 20%) on large equipment purchases. Faculty successfully made the case that it doesn't cost $450k to house a $1 million instrument as compared to $1 million in salaries for researchers.

Also, costs for graduate students do not linearly map to costs for Post-Docs and PIs. This would de-couple the funding for graduate students from the actual enrollment, and would make the computation of the appropriate overhead rate even more complicated and fraught than it already is.

The other important thing to note is that the grantors don't pay the overhead until the actual underlying cost is incurred. Trying to project what it would be would be very hard.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Against a Tax Increase on Berkeley Students by turkishgetup on Wednesday November 08, 2017 @02:40PM (#15656153)

This is an interesting idea. As far as I understand, many grantors such as NSF place strict limit on each categories (PI salary, student stipend, material, travel), and generally you cannot move extra $ from one category to another. I think your proposed method does look like stream-lining the accounting, though I do not have a strong opinion. From the grantors' perspective, they might prefer the first as the second reduces transparency on where $ goes?

[ Parent | on HN ]