it seems one of the stated purposes of capping overhead on NIH grants at 15% by those who champion the cap is to starve PhD programs in the humanities www.nytimes.com/interactive/... - ThreadSky

paulecohen.bsky.social • 49 days ago

it seems one of the stated purposes of capping overhead on NIH grants at 15% by those who champion the cap is to starve PhD programs in the humanities

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/02/13/upshot/nih-trump-funding-cuts.html

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merleeisenberg.bsky.social•49 days ago

FWIW, as someone slowing reading & learning all I can about this atm, the indirect money is often used to fund internal university grants humanities rely on for research. So you may not need a 250k grant, but are happy with 5k a year that the university has. That's often funded via indirect.

paulecohen.bsky.social•49 days ago

interesting - I wouldn't be surprised, and I will definitely read this, thanks for the suggestion

paulecohen.bsky.social•49 days ago

but what I do know for having seen the numbers in my university is that humanities really represent tiny cost centers in the bigger research universities, and bring in substantial tuition revenues (at least historically). And in Canada at least, research funding for humanities comes from Fed gov

merleeisenberg.bsky.social•49 days ago

Humanities generally generate a high ROI (a gross idea but what admin use) because we have almost zero overhead and many universities run on a student credit hour (SCH) model. It's why "majors" are used to cut humanities, since if you used revenue generation vs. costs they generally come out fine.

merleeisenberg.bsky.social•49 days ago

And I finished reading Greene's report, which has zero evidence of indirect grant money used to pay for DEI staff and just states a correlation of "more grant money=more DEI staff." What he has found is when a place gets more grant money, you hire more staff to pay for administering grants.

merleeisenberg.bsky.social•49 days ago

And the number of admin continues to rise at all universities, regardless of grant money coming in for lots of reasons. Not surprised there is zero evidence. The pushback should be not explaining indirect costs, but "science funding saves lives." And "humanities funding gives you your TV shows."

djvanness.bsky.social•48 days ago

And this is why universities like West Virginia, that cut humanities in order to build out STEM, are likely in for a rude awakening in 5 years. Of course, Gordon Gee will be long-since retired and likely raking in consulting fees helping other universities make the same mistake.

jenebbeler.bsky.social•48 days ago

UT Austin’s great plan for increasing $$ without having to spike tuition or ask for more state money was to increase NIH grants. We have invested in a whole medical school. We are less screwed than some bc NIH is only 18% of our grants. But long term….

merleeisenberg.bsky.social•49 days ago

Not sure about Canada but if you work at a public university in the US, the budgets are all posted online since they have to be. The form they are in is not easy to read, but if you spend some time reworking them so they make sense then you can learn a ton. I have learned...a lot.

merleeisenberg.bsky.social•49 days ago

I read this recently, which was a good primer: https://www.amazon.com/University-Budgets-Higher-Leadership-Essentials/dp/1421432765. And if you want the longer version, which I haven't read yet it is: https://www.amazon.com/University-Finances-Accounting-Budgeting-Principles/dp/1421427257/ref=pd_lpo_d_sccl_1/139-3227123-4000122?pd_rd_w=hABJI&content-id=amzn1.sym.4c8c52db-06f8-4e42-8e56-912796f2ea6c&pf_rd_p=4c8c52db-06f8-4e42-8e56-912796f2ea6c&pf_rd_r=PB91GJTZ1D58DDQGTGN6&pd_rd_wg=tdDrd&pd_rd_r=0f3ec2c3-87e3-4a51-8db7-64153ebf2945&pd_rd_i=1421427257&psc=1

danhicks.bsky.social•48 days ago

My understanding is that IDR generally *doesn't* cover all the indirect costs of the research it's funding, so both STEM and humanities need institutional funds. Like, humanists are supporting STEM research with our GE courses.

merz.bsky.social•48 days ago

Generally that is not the case. For example at UW the main pilot grant system is funded by patent royalties.

merleeisenberg.bsky.social•48 days ago

Just passing along what I've been explicitly told about humanities grants at my university. These are tiny compared to pilot grants I would guess. (In the range of 5-10k at most.)

lwhartmann.bsky.social•48 days ago

which of course is a tiny fraction of the indirect costs directly attributable to the specific project.

djvanness.bsky.social•48 days ago

📌

twainspatriot.bsky.social•48 days ago

Ah Mr. Greene. Stated like a true Authoritarian, who wants to control the world and everything in it without the slightest inkling of how the world works.

drspedinnv.bsky.social•48 days ago

It’s not shocking to see Greene flat out lie to twist something into the story he wants to sell. We can thank Walton money for creating him.

thedenature.bsky.social•48 days ago

Yeah, I’m not too surprised he couldn’t find examples to support his hypothesis.

johnlk.bsky.social•48 days ago

I have never been given to understand that this is how university budgets work.

renevq.bsky.social•48 days ago

It’s great to see these chuds outing themselves for the simpletons they are

green496.bsky.social•48 days ago

uh. wow. they're really looking for the cathedral, aren't they?

appuhn.bsky.social•49 days ago

This is one of those times when I wish I understood more about the university's budget.

paulecohen.bsky.social•49 days ago

there was a moment a decade ago, when I was director of a French studies center, when I came to a fuzzy but real understanding of the budget in the faculty of arts and sciences (in my admittedly mammoth institution). What I took away from that was that humanities cost so little to run, but ...

paulecohen.bsky.social•49 days ago

brought in substantial tuition revenues, humanities departments were actually subsidizing other parts of the university. But that was two budget models ago, and humanities enrolments have plummeted, so I don't know the current state of play

I'm now DGS and trying to understand a new ...

paulecohen.bsky.social•49 days ago

graduate funding model that is being rolled out, but I don't really understand it yet, except to say that the monies coming in per student from the province are the key to the whole rube goldberg contraption

historicaloracle.bsky.social•48 days ago

This is still the case at the college I teach at

ryannliebenthal.bsky.social•47 days ago

That’s what this excellent book says! My big takeaway was that universities are lying when they say they “can’t afford” the humanities. In fact, the humanities subsidize the sciences, whose research almost always costs more than federal grants can provide.

https://www.press.jhu.edu/books/title/11659/great-mistake

paulecohen.bsky.social•47 days ago

thank you for this reference, others have been citing this too and I will clearly have to read it

christinekray.bsky.social•48 days ago

This is true at my tech university. The humanities and some of the social sciences (including my dept—anthropology and sociology) cost very little to run and generate revenue by teaching more students than is the case in the STEM disciplines. We all play our part.

tkinias.bsky.social•49 days ago

I haven’t been privy to actual budget numbers at my institutions, but this is my sense in general—humanities faculty are the worst paid, and the courses cost essentially nothing beyond labor and low-tech classroom space to deliver. We subsidize the rest.

appuhn.bsky.social•48 days ago

That's the intuition that a lot of us share. I'd still like to see how the admin calculates it.

tkinias.bsky.social•48 days ago

one thing I’ve seen is that universities often measure “efficiency” based on ratios of enrollment to faculty FTE—without taking into consideration the wildly different salaries across disciplines

thetattooedprof.bsky.social•48 days ago

The intuition is correct--the early chapters of Christopher Newfield's _The Great Mistake_ explain this clearly and convincingly. As faculty, we need to become conversant in university budgeting. It's presented opaquely, but isn't that way in practice once you get a handle on the language and logic.

billstewart.bsky.social•48 days ago

Maybe you get a bigger chunk of the library? But yeah.
And as an engineer, I needed humanities courses to keep me sane in college, and the public speaking course was extremely valuable to my whole tech career, as was the business writing course my company made new employees all take.

tkinias.bsky.social•48 days ago

Funny what you mention about keeping sane, though: My father was an engineer, but the college classes he still talks about 50+ years later are the humanities ones—philosophy, art history, literature...

tkinias.bsky.social•48 days ago

Even the library! At most libraries now the bulk of the budget goes to the journal publishers (I recently read it’s like 80% there vs 20% for books), and that’s really dominated by STEM and vocational/professional journals rather than the humanities and soc sci. Book collections are hollowed out.

appuhn.bsky.social•49 days ago

Right. When I directed the Medieval and Renaissance Center, my budget wasn't even a rounding error in the CAS budget. But I have no idea whether this claim about overhead on science grants being used to fund humanities is even 1% true.

paulecohen.bsky.social•49 days ago

I sincerely doubt it. But I recall how complicated sorting out this sort of thing in the budget model a decade ago was -- the library for ex. was funded by a kind of 'tax' assessed on faculties, and even tiny adjustments to this tax led to wildly different revenue streams into the library

appuhn.bsky.social•49 days ago

Have enrollments plummeted, or just majors? Those aren't quite the same thing. My classes still fill just fine. I'm still generating a lot of tuition revenue for the university.

paulecohen.bsky.social•49 days ago

both - down 50% over the past decade, we hope to have staunched the bleeding now. One of the major drivers of this has been the uni's aggressive recruitment of foreign students (primarily from the PRC) who pay Ivy-level tuition, at the expense of domestic students who pay low fees fixed by province

paulecohen.bsky.social•49 days ago

this has dramatically transformed the student body -- 5% int'l students to well over 25% in under a decade -- and has reshaped the flow of students into different programs

appuhn.bsky.social•49 days ago

It's certainly possible that my classes are filling, but others aren't. I guess I would have to ask. Or become DUS. Ugh.

appuhn.bsky.social•49 days ago

There's no question that federal money is shoring up our graduate fellowships. But I don't get the sense that that money is being funneled through a chem lab across the Square. I am, however, prepared to be wrong on that.

bluememe.bsky.social•48 days ago

Objectively and explicitly anti-humanity.

lsfinn.bsky.social•48 days ago

Shows a real failure to understand that the indirect cost charge is negotiated with each institution based on actual, documented costs associated with the support of funded research.

lsfinn.bsky.social•48 days ago

What’s allowed is set by the government and is uniform across all universities/colleges.

lsfinn.bsky.social•48 days ago

The expenditure of indirect costs are subject to strict reporting requirements.

lsfinn.bsky.social•48 days ago

There is no “pool” of indirect costs “available” for purposes other than those determined by the government.

lsfinn.bsky.social•48 days ago

Might just as well kick the dog with the idea that it will stop the rain. The two have nothing to do with each other.

monawys.bsky.social•47 days ago

you know what i think happened? the asked for a summary of three lines. one line was NIH expenses and they said ‘oh! 15% is what any project should cost in T&E so, use that number’

skinsmi.bsky.social•48 days ago

How about capping CEO pay at 15% above average worker pay? SMH

differentmatt.bsky.social•48 days ago

I don't like the color of paint in my kitchen, so I'm going to set fire to my bedroom.

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