...although this one, I suspect, is motivated mostly by the need to save money to fund tax cuts for Trump and other members of the plutocracy:
The National Institutes of Health announced a new policy Friday to cap a type of funding that supports medical research at universities, a decision that most likely will leave many with a large budget gap. The policy targets $9 billion in so-called indirect funds that the N.I.H. sends along with direct funds to support research into basic science and treatments for diseases ranging from cancer to Alzheimer’s to diabetes.
Currently, some universities get 50 percent or more of the amount of a grant in indirect funds to maintain facilities and equipment and pay support staff. The new policy would cap those indirect funds at 15 percent.
“I think it’s going to destroy research universities in the short term, and I don’t know after that,” said Dr. David A. Baltrus, a University of Arizona associate professor whose lab is developing antibiotics for crops. “They rely on the money. They budget for the money. The universities were making decisions expecting the money to be there"...
An N.I.H. social media post said the change could save the federal government as much as $4 billion and sharply cut payments to Harvard, Yale and Johns Hopkins Universities, which have overhead rates above 60 percent of their grant sums.
While places like Harvard, Yale, and Stanford may be able to make up the shortfall, most other major research universities will not (that includes, I suspect, the University of Chicago, which already faces a $200 million deficit thanks to decisions made by its former President, Robert Zimmer). That means they will have to dramatically curtail their medical research activities, or slash spending elsewhere.
UPDATE: More about this draconian move, which will also face legal challenges.
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