The 15% Cap

From the Washington Post: The Trump administration is cutting billions of dollars in biomedical research funding, alarming academic leaders who said it would imperil their universities and medical centers and drawing swift rebukes from Democrats who predicted dire consequences for scientific research.

The move, announced Friday night by the National Institutes of Health, drastically cuts NIH’s funding for “indirect” costs related to research. These are the administrative requirements, facilities and other operations that many scientists say are essential but that some Republicans have claimed are superfluous.

“The United States should have the best medical research in the world,” NIH said in its announcement. “It is accordingly vital to ensure that as many funds as possible go towards direct scientific research costs rather than administrative overhead.” ...

In its announcement, NIH said that on average, the overhead rate has been about 27 to 28 percent of the direct research funding in the grant but that “many organizations” charge indirect rates of over 50 percent and in some cases more than 60 percent. The agency’s new policy will cap the rate at 15 percent and take effect on Monday, cutting tens of millions of dollars or more in funding for many universities — virtually overnight...

Full story at https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2025/02/08/nih-cuts-billions-dollars-biomedical-funding-effective-immediately/.