"There's a level of acceptance on our campuses" that the funding situation is not going to improve, says Cornelius Pings, president of the Association of American Universities (AAU).
To make matters worse, research administrators say, the paperwork required to satisfy government safety, cost-accounting, and animal-care regulations is mushrooming. At the same time, stiffer indirect-costs restrictions prohibit schools from receiving government reimbursement for the hours spent on such time- consuming labor.
"It's a catch between a rock and a hard place," says Earl Friese, a materials scientist who is director of sponsored research at the California Institute of Technology. "We're required to do more administration--which costs more --but the government says, `We're not going to pay for it.'<|>"
The much-publicized 1991 investigation into accusations that Stanford University misused millions of dollars in federal funds has changed the way university research is regarded by Congress, says Suzanne Polmar, a biologist who is ...
