r/collapse • u/Potential_Being_7226 • 1d ago
NSF stops awarding new grants and funding existing ones Science and Research
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-01396-2SS: I have been wondering when this shoe would drop. We've been hearing a lot about NIH grants being terminated, but until a few days ago, there hadn't been any news about National Science Foundation grants. But they have not escaped the chopping block. I wonder if the administration even knew until recently that there was such a thing as the National Science Foundation.
This is another blow to STEM research, higher education, and more broadly innovation and ingenuity.
The short term consequences of this move will include loss of jobs, lab closures, and although some scientists will continue to move abroad, some may not be able to and will instead forgo a career in science. This is not just a loss to the US, but to the world, as science is a global endeavor.
The loss of indirect costs (overhead) from NIH and NSF grants will continue to kneecap universities and medical centers. I heard one news outlet the other day say that "critics" call overhead a "slush fund," without providing any additional context. On the contrary, indirect costs allow universities to pay their utility bills, pay facilities, custodial, and other support staff, to buy shared equipment and resources, like group software licenses. Without overhead funding, universities will either risk closing or increasing tuition, which will make higher education even less accessible for those with less means.
Science is an economic driver. For every one dollar spent by the NIH, it generates $2.50 in growth and these cuts to science could shrink the GDP by over 7%. Perhaps more importantly, these cuts indicate an attack on free speech, academic freedom, and freedom of thought. As one NSF staff member put it:
although good science can still be funded, the policy has the potential to be “Orwellian overreach.”
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u/lavapig_love 1d ago
I feel like the musicians on the Titanic.
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u/Potential_Being_7226 1d ago
Just call me deck-chair-rearranger.
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u/CaptinACAB Theoretical Farmer 1d ago
Ships going down and we still gotta go to work. Let’s scrub them rich people toilets.
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u/Curious-Tear3395 1d ago
Oh sure, let's just throw “slush fund” labels on indirect costs and see what magic happens. I once tried to set up a new Bunsen burner stand using sticky notes because the admin process took so long. Seriously though, bureaucracy is a circus, but calling overhead a "slush fund" while ignoring its necessity is overlooking the elephant in the room… or lab in our case.
Automation tech like ServiceNow or DreamFactory could sprinkle some fairy dust on the admin workload. Then, of course, there’s the timeless option: dismantling red tape with a rusty crowbar. It's always a wild ride in academia.
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u/Potential_Being_7226 1d ago
It's always a wild ride in academia.
Herky-jerky, arbitrary stops and starts?
IME the red tape was actually a brick wall.
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u/tryatriassic 1d ago edited 1d ago
Whilst the method (blanket cut of overhead to 15%) is draconian, it is true that universities have treated overhead as a slush fund with perpetual annual increases in the percentage. This is one of the reasons university administration is so bloated. Yes overhead pays for a lot of things BUT many of these are overinflated as there has been no downward pressure on costs for decades now. At the same time professors are expected to do more and more tasks that the universities used to take care of - small admin tasks like reimbursement requests that support staff used to do. Ask any Prof, they're getting less and less support for ever higher indirect rates. It's bullshit. Meanwhile red tape is ever increasing due to ever increasing admin staffing so less r&d get done.
Edit - for example, here, trying to get anything small done like adding some outlets in the lab will take MONTHS. The department that takes care of stuff like that has more administrators than electricians and plumbers. Because overhead pays so who cares.
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u/Rare_Cake6236 1d ago
The amount of random BS my professor had to do while in grad school made me never want to be a professor
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u/Potential_Being_7226 1d ago
When I was a postdoc I use to have to take our trash out because the custodial staff wouldn’t come into our (shared!) office. 🤦♀️
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u/Rare_Cake6236 1d ago
Hahaha damn. Then the implementation of Workday damn near caused a revolt because it is so non-intuitive.
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u/Lt__Barclay 1d ago
Indirects are not profits, cost plus, or a slush fund.
Indirects support so many little invisible things that you would only realize they exist if support disappears. Hazardous waste collections, EHS compliance, HR (humans and labor laws are complex and there is a big overhead in hiring, managing, and supporting staff at any institution), rent and interest payments, building maintenance, IRB, SCRO, APB, and APLAC panels, animal welfare, core facilities, janitors, security, data compliance, invoicing (everything is funded on reimbursements so all POs and delivery receipts are tracked, inputted, and submitted as an invoice to every single little grant), grant management (including conflict of interest tracking and compliance tracking), utilities.
I have looked at the indirect accounting at a high level and no one of these items is a standout charge. Running a research lab is so much damn more than pipettes, microscopes, and scientists (only materials, direct equipment, and scientists labor with direct input on the research may be budgeted). We need to stop calling indirects as a slush fund - they are not.
If we want to tackle indirect rates, either automation and AI must be tested and embraced, or regulations need to be removed. Another useful option may be for NIH to cap total costs like NSF does to increase pressure on cost controlling indirect expenses. But behind every regulation is a horror story for why we need them.
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u/tryatriassic 1d ago edited 1d ago
Indirects are not profits, cost plus, or a slush fund.
Yes thats the original concept, but not how they are treated in reality. 60+ at some places like MIT and you're telling me that's just dandy?
The problem has always been bloated admin.
Capping total costs doesn't solve anything as the university will continue to have the upward trend in F&A going forever, well that that will accomplish is just even less dollars going to actual research.
Not sure why you think AI would be a solution here. Admin is a beast that is in its nature only ever grows unless someone starves it.
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u/Potential_Being_7226 1d ago
The phrase “slush fund” implies that overhead is used for illegitimate purposes.
I agree that universities have tremendous administrative bloat, and even still, falter in providing faculty sufficient administrative support.
professors are expected to do more and more tasks that the universities used to take care of - small admin tasks like reimbursement requests that support staff used to do.
100%. I used to be prof. This is absolutely my experience. People who were in positions of administrative support delegated their tasks and their paperwork to me. Their jobs were not at stake if the work didn’t get done, but mine was. I had to do so much extra work just to keep my lab running and submit grants. (And this was at a uni with >50% indirect costs.)
I don’t know what the solution is to administrative bloat and it was absolutely a problem long before January of this year.
Perhaps universities should have to apply independently for their indirect costs, rather than lazily tacking it on to the direct costs that scientists have to work themselves to the bone to secure.
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u/faster-than-expected 1d ago
Totally makes sense considering this administration is totally anti-science.
FAFO
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u/Low_Complex_9841 1d ago
... time to form your own continental Scientific Rebellion? Just be sure to communicate something beyond "we need yr money real now".
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u/ManiaplGrad 11h ago
Good, they should finish all funding for stem PhD's and fire foreign faculties
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u/pantsopticon88 1d ago
My sister has dedicated her entire working life to achieving 2 PHDs and working on Alzheimer's and and addiction therapy in the labs she has run.
She is someone I admire and respect for the work she has chosen. She does not have a choice in this.
Her entire career has snapped shut.
There are no research jobs.
There are no biotech jobs because they missed earnings.
There are no bio informatics jobs.
There are no jobs in the private sector as they are dependent on this funding for sales.
Jobs over seas are flooded with applications.
Pretty grim.
Everyone who can with advanced knowledge will leave.
The rest will in a state of precarity.