What Researchers Say

Despite some agreement in Washington that indirect costs may have climbed too high, researchers and scholars nationwide are torn on the issue.

Some professors express concern that the high rates of indirect cost may limit or drive away direct monies for research. If the rate at a particular university is much higher than at another, then the government may be more likely to award a grant to the institution with the lower rate, they say.

Terence F. Blaschke, associate professor of medicine and pharmacology at Stanford Medical School, would like a lower indirect cost rate. For one grant that he was awarded, he received significantly less research money than he wanted because of indirect costs.

"In at least one of the grants that supported my research, the funding agency was looking at a total dollar amount," Blaschke said of a grant application. "We couldn't get all the direct money we requested."

"Anybody would like to see the indirect cost rate as low as it could be, consistent with the university being able to provide those research services," Blaschke said.

The researcher added that right now the National Institutes of Health (NIH) is "indirect cost-blind." That is, NIH reviews grants primarily on the grounds of scientific merit, without looking at a school's overhead cost rate.

Priscilla A. Schaffer, a Harvard professor of microbiology and molecular genetics, also sees high indirect cost rates as a concern. Although NIH--the Medical School's largest federal grant sponsor--may be indirect-cost blind, Schaffer worries that an economic downturn may move the agency to change that policy.

"This is the great concern to all of us," Schaffer said. "That's a serious problem, potentially."

At NIH, one grant administrator says that although indirect costs are considered before a final funding decision is made, science is still the top priority.

"Science is the driving force," says Ronald G. Geller, who works at the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute. "Right now, the initial review groups that review applications consider only direct costs."

Despite some colleagues' concerns, Leon Eisenberg, Presley professor of social medicine, says indirect costs are necessary for research.

"I don't think that the money is going to buy the dean a Mazzerati," Eisenberg said. "I think the school is entitled to it."

"If it's not paid as indirect costs, then how the hell is the school going to pay for it?" he asks. "Harvard has a lot of money, but not an infinite amount of money."

And Harvard's Lehman Professor of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics Bernard N. Fields agrees.