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   Dan Goodman (neuralreckoning@neuromatch.social)'s status on Thursday, 21-Mar-2024 18:45:56 JST Dan Goodman

   Can anyone explain something about university finances to me? The finance people say that grant overheads don't actually cover the cost of research. I would take this to mean that each grant is a net financial loss to the university. So why do they want us to get more grants?

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     pettter (pettter@mastodon.acc.umu.se)'s status on Thursday, 21-Mar-2024 18:45:55 JST pettter

     in reply to

     @neuralreckoning It depends on the exact setup, but what can happen is that grants are a (financial) loss _for the Department_, but an overall good thing for the university in terms of prestige, employed postdocs and doctoral students, publications, overall budget, expected future grants, etc. etc.

     And few universities are without a line of liquidity to cover the short-term loss for overhead (tuition fees, endowment profits, government funding etc.).

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     pettter (pettter@mastodon.acc.umu.se)'s status on Thursday, 21-Mar-2024 18:46:50 JST pettter

     in reply to

     @neuralreckoning And the overhead is still usually not that large in comparison to the grant money, so it's quite a large force multiplies in terms of overall cash flow.