U Pittsburgh pauses all PhD admissions amid DOGE funding cuts

The big question is how should the government allocate the funding for basic research between career stages to maximize the benefit to the society.

If you focus on training PhDs, which is the American way, you get a steady stream of new people with fresh ideas. But then most PhDs must leave the academia after graduating.

If you focus on postdocs, you get more value from the PhDs you have trained. Most will still have to leave the academia, but it happens in a later career stage.

If you focus on long-term jobs, you have more experienced researchers working on longer-term projects. But then you are stuck with the people you chose before you had a good idea of their ability to contribute.

We aren't really. We are guiding people to get college degrees. However, undergraduate education and professional research are both done by the same institution. Further, that institution likes to have those professional and apprentice professional researchers work as teachers. The result of this is that undergraduates get a lot of exposure to professional Academia, so they naturally have a tendency to develop an interest in that profession. Given how small the profession actually is, even a small tendency here saturates the job market.

> Also, what would be illegal about the change? Are the overhead rates in a statute somewhere? The grants certainly aren’t individually appropriated by Congress.

2024 appropriations (and it showed in many years before then-- Public Law 118-47. Statutes at Large 138 (2024): 677.

SEC. 224. In making Federal financial assistance, the provisions relating to indirect costs in part 75 of title 45, Code of Federal Regulations, including with respect to the approval of deviations from negotiated rates, shall continue to apply to the National Institutes of Health to the same extent and in the same manner as such provisions were applied in the third quarter of fiscal year 2017. None of the funds appropriated in this or prior Acts or otherwise made available to the Department of Health and Human Services or to any department or agency may be used to develop or implement a modified approach to such provisions, or to intentionally or substantially expand the fiscal effect of the approval of such deviations from negotiated rates beyond the proportional effect of such approvals in such quarter.

> Also, what would be illegal about the change?

At the *very* least you should be following the administrative rules act (requiring you to solicit 45 days for comments by effected parties) before making such a dramatic change in policy.

Courts absolutely love striking down EOs (of both Dems and Reps Admins) when they should have been following the administrative rules act.

The “overhead” isn’t even overhead as most people understand it.

But the real question is why does the general public think 59% is too high? Irs an arbitrary number. Maybe an appropriate level of “overhead” is 1000%.

In reality the people who actually know anything about how this is calculated, across the board and across the political spectrum, do not think this is a major concern at all.

The only people who are complaining about it are the ones who hear the word overhead, have no concept of what it means other than taking a lay persons understanding that all overhead is unnecessary and are coming with the idea that anything above 0% is bad.

1. Why should the public believe that they can fix it. Perhaps they can't, that's not entirely my point. My point is that if the government firmly believes that a change is necessary there are _simple_ ways of acheiving such a change without causing such chaos, waste, and hardship. Perhaps a phased in approach, or other mechanisms. Overnight shock therapy offers very little economic benefits while having very harsh personal and insitutional cost.

2. What is illegal about the change. The NIH overhead rate is actually negotiated directly between the institution and the NIH, following a process put into law. This is why a federal judge has blocked this order [1]. I'm far from a lawyer, but my read of this is that this is a change that would need to come through congress or a re-negotiation of the rates through the mandated process.

[1]: https://www.aamc.org/news/press-releases/aamc-lawsuit-result...

You seem to be unfamiliar with how indirect rates work.

First some basic math: if a project is budgeted at a direct cost of $500,000, the indirect rate of 60% applies to the $500,000, i.e. $300,000.

The total grant is thus $500K + $300K = $800K. The $300K indirect costs are thus 37.5% of the total. This is an upper limit, as many direct costs such as equipment do not get indirect rates applied to them.

Second, these rates are painstakingly negotiated with the NSF and NIH. Yearly audits to ensure compliance must be passed if funding is to continue.

Third, these indirect cost go towards to items such as electricity, heat, building maintenance, safety training and compliance, chemical disposal, and last by not least laboratory support services such as histology labs, proteomics core, compute infrastructure, and some full time staff scientific staff. Only a relatively small portion goes to administration.

Finally, scientists generally would welcome review and reform of indirect costs to ensure they get the maximize benefit from the indirect rates. However, DOGE is not interested in reform. They are interested in raze and burn destruction.

If DOGE gets its way, it will knock the Unites States off its perch as the world’s technological leader.

>Also, what would be illegal about the change?

Besides the president screwing with the budget agreed upon by Congress that kicked all this off?

Again please read my post carefully. There is a valid critique of overhead rates, but simply doing it suddenly in this manner has little added economic benefit in the long run, while ruining lives and creating waste/chaos in the short run.

You can make a strong argument these institutions require reform, but such reform should be done not overnight, and not through such broad strokes.

Spurious. Football coaches are not paid by overhead dollars. but mainly by alumni that like football wins.

No, when a major for-profit company outsources research they pay way more than a 50% “markup”. Unless they go to a research university: then they pay much less, and just like the federal government they are getting a fine deal.

Yes, some rich foundations (Gates, Ellison etc) exploit the situation and do not pay full overhead costs: They are essentially mooching on the research institutions and the federal government.

Doesn’t the football stuff fund itself through tickets, licensing, etc? It seems hard to believe research overhead grants are going to the football coach.

It worked during Clinton's administration, and didn't involve a wrecking ball. It's possible when people actually commmunicate with each other.

The federal workforce, as a percentage of all jobs in the U.S. was 4% in the 50's, decreased steadily to 2% in 2000 and has held roughly steady since then. (The source is https://usafacts.org/articles/how-many-people-work-for-the-f... second figure, and I'm taking total jobs as a proxy for the population that the workforce serves.)

The end of that period of reduction was Clinton's Presidency. Clinton's National Performance Review (NPR) started at the beginning his term in '93. It had goals very similar to the stated goals of this efficiency effort, but it was organized completely differently. He said, "I'll ask every member of our Cabinet to assign their best people to this project, managers, auditors, and frontline workers as well."

GPT4o: The NPR's initial report, released in September 1993, contained 384 recommendations focused on cutting red tape, empowering employees, and enhancing customer service. Implementation of these recommendations involved presidential directives, congressional actions, and agency-specific initiatives. Notably, the NPR led to the passage of the Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA) of 1993, which required federal agencies to develop strategic plans and measure performance outcomes. Additionally, the NPR contributed to a reduction of over 377,000 federal jobs during the 1990s, primarily through buyouts, early retirements, natural attrition and some layoffs (reductions-in-force or RIFs).

Source: https://govinfo.library.unt.edu/npr/library/papers/bkgrd/bri...):

The recommendations that involved changes to law, the GPRA, were passed in both houses of Congress by unanimous voice vote.

I don't think the stated goals of the current efficiency drive are controversial. The problem is the method. I want to understand the basis for people supporting those methods, the "we've got to break some eggs" crowd, when the example of the NPR exists. In my opinion, it didn't cause conflicts between branches of government, didn't disrupt markets, and was wildly successful. It also caused much less disruption in people's lives, because the changes were implemented over several years with much more warning.

I, personally, don't think the real goals of this effort are the stated goals, but that's a different issue.

> can survive drastic, chaotic and insane levels of cuts

I get ads on X that are just videos of animals being slowly shot multiple times to death. There's also some for tools to slim jim car locks. None of the mainstream/normal accounts I used to follow (shout out SwiftOnSecurity) are there, and instead it's a hotbed of crypto scams and deranged vitriol. The site is still running, but is a shell of its former self, making so little money that Elon is trying to sue people (and now, abusing US govt payment systems) to force them to pay him for advertising.

I can see how if you think that's a success, that you would think similar actions with regard to the US government are successful. The necessary cuts he's making are not necessary, and I'm guessing you aren't impacted, so, given the general lack of theory of mind towards others, I'm not surprised you think they're ok. The rest of us out there who understand the idea of human suffering are concerned for our fellow citizens facing arbitrary and unnecessary pain as the result of a capricious court eunach's drug influenced decisions before the "restabilization" that will never happen.

> and still survive

Twitter hardly ever made money before and after is in the same state now. Its contribution (anything?) to this country is far different than a government institution.

The comparison here isn’t encouraging and makes no sense.

This equivalence between a company that provides one app that, if it were to disappear, would hurt no one, and a government that has thousands of functions, many of which are life-and-death in both the short and long run, is just ridiculous.

Twitter’s valuation has plummeted since Elon’s purchase.

And to the extent Twitter is still limping along it’s because Twitter due to its very nature benefits immensely from the stickiness of social networks.

For example, Facebook is almost completely junk. It hasn’t improved or been relevant in a long time. And yet it survives and makes tons of money simply because people don’t want to rebuild their networks.

There are many other examples where even minor cuts have been devastating. The classic example is of course GE, the ultimate example of cutting a company to the bone, which worked for a decade or so, but set the company up to essentially cease to exist after.

Then you have Boeing, a company in an industry with less competition than probably any other in the world and it’s struggling to make money because of this thinking.

> short term disruption

Great euphemism for “In one month, we’re going to kill tens of millions by withholding food/medical care and permanently destroy institutions that took a century to build”.

I’m going to use that phrase.

This is the most infuriating part of this. Musk acted like a moron and overpaid for twitter. Then cash constrained, he rapidly cut things to save money. Now twitter is completely diminished in its reach, at an all time brand low, and at real risk from competitors.

Meanwhile, the companies Musk built that actually have dominated their space are big idea innovators like Tesla and SpaceX. Musk wasn’t successful because he’s a good penny pincher, he was successful by burning cash on big ideas and talented people.

But somehow we decided its case 1 that we’ll apply to the government.

Elon proved with Twitter that he doesn't know what he is doing. Huge loss, zero lessons. If US ends up being downsized financially and ethically the way Twitter has, that will also provide zero lessons for Musk.

It seems Twitter is in a death spiral. That is the model to apply to scientific research and academia that has powered Americas dominance for the past 100 years?

So the number of educated people in the country drops

You mean like Pitt's endowment of 5.8 Billion?

Oxford and ETH Zurich will be open for the rich, but Trumpists openly despise higher education, and I'm not sure whether any American universities will be safe if Trump stays in power for four years.

Source?

Franco and Stalin both increased University funding.

Cuba to this day spends more of its GDP on education than any other nation on Earth.

Syria (under Assad) spent more than South Korea, Afghanistan more than Greece, Iran more than the UK, Egypt more than Ireland, Iraq (under Sadam) more than Japan, Saudi Arabia more than Canada, etc.

You can look it up, the more totalitarian the government the higher the spend on education not less.

There's three big cohorts that heavily fund their University systems:

1. The Nordic States 2. Former British colonies 3. Dictatorships

They have a whole fund for it called National Social Science Fund that funds non-STEM and alike research.

Yes. The only thing that contributes to society is science.

That's why we have museums devoted exclusively to science and the study of science. It's why scientists tend to write great books about the human condition.

Jesus Christ.

Also. Define hard science please.

What part of these new policies helps address this issue?

And America didn’t allow that for a long time. Obama attempted to cap indirect costs unsuccessfully.

America also has what appears to be an unlimited tolerance for undergraduate tuition fully paid for by non-dischargeable debt.

You’d be hard pressed to find another group in America with less sympathy than universities with the common man. Except perhaps government workers

Its "normal" because its generally accepted, not because it makes any sense.

I was part of a research lab on grants like that. We had close to $1m in total funding, on top of that indirect was like 50% (so $500k/year) We maybe had 4000 sq. foot of lab space in an old building that wasn't maintained well. We had one bathroom for each gender on the floor for the research arm of two whole medical departments. Two admins for the whole research department of 7-8 labs totallying maybe 60-70 staff.

I ran the numbers and the lab space would have maybe cost $100k/year tops (probably more like $80k, depending on quality) if we were rent out equivalent industrial office space. On top of that you have electrical, heating, telecom, at most $10k. Support services such as HR, cleaning, IT support (of which we didn't use a whole lot) could have been contracted out, at most around $20k. So there was about $350k which I figured was mostly just a subsidy and went to "administration". Not that I was philosophically opposed to it, except maybe the admin.

They are high relative to private industry. They're supporting all those administrators that colleges have accumulated.

It's significant that U. Pitt. chose to stop admitting students rather than starting to lay off administrators.

Well that makes it sound worse than I thought. Why should it be any higher than the pro rata allocation of the project’s actual use of university facilities (lab space, equipment, etc)?

Even in the defense industry, a cost-plus contract with a 10% margin is a lot. And it’s a federal crime to include costs in the overhead amount that aren’t traceable to the actual project.

If I understand you correctly, what you're claiming is:

University 1 gets $100. $10 of it goes to admin, $90 to researcher. Researcher spends $60 on supplies and equipment. This is accounted for as 10% administrative overhead.

University 2 gets $100. $20 of it goes to admin, $40 to researcher, $40 to supplies and equipment. This is accounted for as 60% administrative overhead.

Is this an accurate characterization of your claim?

I am trying to follow this...

if a grant is the same $1M and Bozo University gets to spend all million on the actual research at hand, but UCSF only gets 200K, how is UCSF more efficient?

Wouldn't the LN2 be traceable to the project either way as direct non-overhead cost, but UCSF efficiency makes that cost lower, achieving the same overhead ratio but either a lower grant cost or more researcher stipend?

The Salk Institute's overhead rate, IIRC, is 90%. Yet, they keep getting funds, so they're doing something right.

It’s worth clarifying that the 59% overhead rate doesnt mean 59% of the funds go to overhead. If you have a $1m grant, you add on $590k for overhead. Then the total grant is $1.59m, so actually 37% of the total funds are for overhead.

FYI, Overhead don't include everything. Even in remaining 49% there are many overheads :)

If we could all group together, such a resignation wouldn't even last a day. It's the ultimate prisoners dilemma and we're slowly running out of options less drastic. everyone would benefit and few would lose their jobs compared to this still-fast slashing.

also, nitpick:

>aren’t programmers with a LinkedIn inbox full of recruiters to draw on.

It's not 2022 anymore. Those LinkedIn inboxes are empty for me. This market sucks.

It hasn't happened in America, but I think people severely underestimate how devastating a real strike can be. Remember that the ports strike in October only lasted 2 days but estimated costs were already in the 10 (or even 11) figures.

A full on government walkout for a day would fix a ton. They won't care, but even their voter base wouldn't ignore the late payments, cancelled appointments, and overall confusion a day would do.