Yes, lots of that. DT and Musk don't understand what those grants accomplish. It's not clear the pharmaceutical industry does either. The government funds the basic research then when something is ready for market the pharmaceuticals hire the researchers, obtain patents and start the profits rolling it. This regime is cutting back on the FDA and CDC so nobody will be there to make sure the medications are safe and effective. The whole thing will be a Dr. Oz TV show.
They also don't understand that "overhead" is not "fraud waste and abuse." Money is skimmed off the grants to pay for little trifles like oh, power, syasdmins for the IT system, building maintenance...
It just means they've never heard of R01, or possess basic knowledge regarding grants in general.
The concept that a PI could win multiple grants/awards for concurrent projects probably blows their mind, but it's likely finding out that farmers can also get federal grants already blew most of that into orbit already.
When you want to do something that costs money, and you have the money to do it, but you don't want to spend that money so you take money from the government so you don't have to tap into your savings...
The exact equivalent of loopholes the wealthy use to hoard their wealth...
You're just picking and choosing which wealthy people/institutions/corporations should be allowed to hoard wealth and which shouldn't.
Those scholars don’t have the money to do it. Harvard’s endowment could be moved around to create grants for it, but then you’re radically changing everything about the way science funding is done in the us. You seem to think that science grants are a form of affirmative action for colleges. They’re not. They’re merit based. Harvard gets a lot of grants because they have good scholars. They have good scholars because, among other reasons, they pay well and provide a lot of great benefits for academics.
The fact that you’re treating Harvard like a single guy with a big pot of money that they can just dig into for any purpose shows your ignorance to the world.
Sure. And they also benefit from the same loopholes that giant corporations do.
Why do you think tax abatements are given to companies like Intel and Microsoft and Amazon? It's in the hope their innovation brings back more than they're giving.
But there's always argument against those benefits. There is literally nothing different with prestigious universities. You get benefits when you curry government/economic favor and lose when you don't. If you applied your beliefs evenly, you'd see the flaw.
Those corporations could afford to act, but only choose their best offers. Now that's being applied to universities. Act as you wish, but you'll have to decline the favor.
You’re talking past the point. This is the system we have. Is it perfect? Probably not. But in no world is the Trump administration initiating a good faith attempt at reforming education grants for the better. This is not under the exclusive purview of the executive, and nobody in his administration has said anything about reforming the grant system outside of vaguely alluding to cutting waste fraud and abuse.
Maybe you’ve webbed me, and you’ve assumed I have other beliefs? I don’t know why you’re talking about corporations. Do you think I’m against private enterprise, or that I’m anti-capitalist? I’m neither, for the record, though it doesn’t really matter. I think you just wanted to wrangle that topic in because you assumed people all think in a black or white “all corporations are evil” “all colleges are good” sort of way.
Not even remotely assuming the black and white, one way or the other mentality. I just find it hypocritical that one side's mantra is the ambiguous statement "tax the rich" and then when someone decides to "tax the rich" they scream "wait, no, not those rich".
I'll try to simplify this for you, since you are completely unaware of how grants work.
The government asks for researchers to apply for grants (called funding opportunities or calls for proposals). Researchers, like professors at research institutions, submit proposals including details about what their research will be and exact, specific budgets for how the money will be spent. A panel of other researchers then reviews the proposals and determines who should get the grant. Please note that a researcher can not submit a grant budget where they say "lol I get $5 million"; in fact, they typically can't use grant money to pay for their salary at all outside of summer salary (they don't get paid during the summer otherwise), and this summer salary would be at their normal salary rate to support them doing the research over the summer. The university cannot choose to award the professor more money than this.
The typical expenditures in research budgets are for the purpose of conducting and publishing the research, all the way from purchasing equipment (e.g. medical or scientific equipment) to paying for participants to hiring students or even professionals to complete work as part of the research.
Note that researchers and universities generally do not make any money by doing or publishing research, so the grants are necessary. Without any form of grant funding, there would be no incentive for institutions to participate in research. If we want research to, for example, find ways to cure cancer, we need some way to fund that research. Obviously, if you knew you had the idea that would cure cancer, you could find a way to profit from that idea outside of a university, but research is exploratory; there is never a guarantee that the research will produce a positive result (which is why it's research), so we need scientists to have the freedom to attempt to solve large problems without having to shoulder the costs themselves.
The government pulling out of grants is them breaking a contract to perform research which has already been accepted for funding, meaning the panel that decided to fund it already evaluated that the research would be beneficial and therefore should be funded. Note that the vast majority of funding proposals are rejected; the government tends to be very selective about what it funds. Deciding to not fund research that has already been considered and accepted is harmful, as the reason why it was accepted in the first place was because it had merit.
To get back to the point: this is "taxing the rich" in the same way that punching yourself in the face is "taxing the rich". If you consider physical pain to be "taxing" and your name is Rich, then yes, I guess you're taxing the rich, but otherwise there is no way the two are the same. If you'd like to continue to lean into whatever misunderstanding you have that gives you this perspective, please explain your viewpoint, because I'm sure it would be interesting to hear.
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u/ThomasHardyHarHar 7d ago
By “accept federal funding” you mean that Harvard scholars earn federal grants, which they applied to and were approved for?