WASHINGTON--The political fallout from Stanford University's questionable use of overhead charges for its federally funded research projects appears likely to achieve what a decade of pressure from the White House could not do: place a cap on how much universities can spend on the administrative portion of their indirect costs.
Welcome news for scientists is that such a cap would, in theory, free up an estimated $100 million or more that the government could then plow into greater support for research. At the same time, the imposition of a cap would signal a serious defeat for lobbyists representing the research-intensive universities where many of those scientists work.
Administrators at those universities have opposed past attempts to impose such a cap on the grounds that their institutions need full reimbursement of indirect costs to afford the laboratories, buildings, and support facilities required by today's research teams. Without such funds, they say, ...
