The 2022 report includes an analysis of 82 universities, the indirect cost rate they receive federal subsidies and the indirect cost rate they receive from private donors such as the Sloan Foundation, the Gates Foundation and the Initiative Chan Zuckerberg. Ten of the schools in the Heritage Foundation analysis have not confirmed their indirect cost rates for private donors, leaving 72 complete entries in the analysis of the report.
Of these 72 universities, the report affirmed that 67 private research subsidies accepted with indirect search cost of zero percentage – illustrated the same analysis and the same conclusion as in the opinion of the NIH.
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The Heritage Foundation report concluded that only three schools in the sample refuse to accept the indirect cost rates of private foundations at lower rates than those they have negotiated with the federal government. These schools are the University of Alabama in Birmingham, Massachusetts Institute for Technology and the University of Michigan.
The opinion of the NIH refers to the same three schools without identifying the Heritage Foundation as the source of the analysis. He mentions that Harvard required minimal indirect cost coverage of 15% of private donors and that California Institute of Technology required indirect cost coverage of 20%. These examples also appear in the report of the Heritage Foundation.
One of the authors of the report, Jay Greene, the principal researcher of the Heritage Foundation, says that he was not involved in the drafting of the advice of the NIH, but recognized that a paragraph of the opinion of the NIH “seems to be a reference to our 2022 report”. The NIH did not respond to the request for wired comments.
A plan aimed at reducing indirect cost rates in federal subsidies also appears in the 2025 project, the policy plan for the heritage foundation of almost a thousand pages for a second presidency of Trump. “This market -based reform would help reduce the subsidy of federal taxpayers of left -wing agendas,” said the report. During his presidential campaign, Trump constantly disowned any link with the Heritage Foundation and Project 2025.
Monday, a Coalition of 22 states has filed a legal action contesting the legality of NIH’s attempt to reduce indirect costs.
Universities say that the ceiling will hinder their ability to do vital research. “The discovery of new treatments would slow down, the opportunities to train the next generation of scientific leaders would shrink, and the prowess in science and engineering in our country would be seriously compromised,” wrote President of Harvard Alan Garber in an article on the University website.
Some universities lose more than $ 100 million in federal funding if the new grant ceiling is maintained. According to statisticalWeill Cornell Medicine reported $ 107 million in indirect costs in 2022 – a figure that would fall to $ 23 million if the rate was 15%.
