Getting money from the US government to do research isn't exactly a walk in the park. With the hundreds of thousands of dollars in grant funding that come from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) or the 2009 stimulus act come a slew of rules that dictate how university administrators need to keep track of how the cash is spent. And recently, the government has been holding those administrators and grantees accountable for every dollar.
According to a report by The Chronicle of Higher Education, audits and investigations of highly funded research universities are on the rise. Inspectors at agencies such as the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), which oversees about $25 billion awarded by the NIH annually, and the National Science Foundation (NSF) have been finding oversights and minor misappropriations and charging grantees with repaying misspent grant money.
For example, Florida State University (FSU) was recently ordered ...
