I want to emphasize a point that Truth4USM made on the long thread about Shelby Thames' purported vision for USM.

Administrators crave grant-funded research with indirect cost components  to a disproportionate degree.   They overvalue it in relation to the net positive revenue that it provides to the university.  (And there is no question that it brings in revenue.)

Why?

1) They get to brag about it on their resumes, and enhance their attractiveness to a more prestigious institution, or one that will give them more power.

2) They get to add discretionary funds to their budgets.  In the typical college budget, 90 or even 95% of the total is tied up in salaries and benefits.   Any dollars that the dean can get from indirect cost returns on grants will be dollars that the dean can spend as he or she chooses.  Hence research grants and contracts will be a disproportionately attractive source of revenue, from the dean's point of view.  And so on up and down the academic adminstrative ladder.

As Truth4USM also noted, indirect cost percentages vary from one granting agency to another.  The 43.8% figure on USM's Web site applies to some Federal grants--by no means all.  And contracts with industry usually don't have indirect cost provisions at all.

A few years ago, as the Clemson administration mounted a full-court press for more grant-funded research, colleagues who were in a position to get contracts with industry told me that administrators gave them contradictory advice: some told them to go for the contracts, others said, in essence, why bother when there's no indirect cost return. 

If grants and contracts were seen as covering the costs of conducting research too expensive to be done with the university's own resources, administrators would be less dazzled by them.  They would also be inclined to factor in the costs of doing the grant-funded research, instead of treating grant income as pure gravy.

If, on the other hand, departments or colleges were allowed to keep some of the added tuition revenue that they generated, administrators would no longer have such a ho-hum attitude toward tuition.  (And what if differential tuition could be charged by the program, or even by the course, as is now easily implementable with computerized registration and billing?)

Nearly all research-university administrators are subject to the illusions I've described.  A few,  like Shelby Thames, are so dazzled that they can't see anything else.

Robert Campbell