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Opinion: Don’t overlook the continued threat of cuts to universities’ indirect research costs
“A cut to the reimbursement of necessary research costs is a cut to research, plain and simple,” writes Barbara R. Snyder, president of the Association of American Universities.
Imagine that one evening you go out to a neighborhood restaurant and order a steak dinner. It is delicious, and everything is going well — until the check comes, and you demand that the proprietor knock the price down by a third. Your rationale? You refuse to pay for anything other than the cost of the meat and the labor of the chef and the server. You saw the price on the menu and ordered the steak at that price, but you tell the owner that you don’t think that you should have to cover any of his costs for the restaurant’s rent, electricity, the gas used to cook your steak, the purchase and maintenance of kitchen equipment, the cleaning crew, costs of compliance with local health regulations, or bookkeeping. The owner turns to you and says, candidly, “Sorry, but without all those other things I have to pay for, there’d be no steak dinner.”
America’s research universities are facing a similar challenge while working to deliver lifesaving scientific advancements and cures for the American people. Every time they compete and win a grant to conduct federally funded scientific and technological research, they have to pay not just for the project labor of the researchers and any needed supplies or materials, but all the costs necessary to conduct the research in the first place. America’s research universities, like the restaurant business owner in your neighborhood, pay those other necessary costs in advance in anticipation of being reimbursed by the customer later on.
