Straws in the Wind - Part 25

From Inside Higher Ed: ...After the National Institutes of Health tried earlier this year to cut funding for universities’ costs indirectly related to research and set off alarm bells across higher education, 10 higher education associations decided to come up with their own model for research funding rather than having the government take the lead. Now, after just over six weeks of work, that group known as the Joint Associations Group is homing in on a plan to rework how the government funds research, and they want feedback from the university research community before they present a proposal to Congress and the Trump administration...

Both versions of what JAG is calling the Fiscal Accountability in Research model, or FAIR, are geared toward offering more accountability and transparency about how federal research dollars are spent. JAG hopes that in the end, the new model will be simpler than the current one. They also want to nix terms like “indirect costs rate” and “overhead” for either essential research support or general research operations in an effort to underscore that the money goes toward the real costs of research...

One model, which the group calls FAIR No. 1, would include costs related to managing the grant, general research operations and facilities as a fixed percentage of the total budget. The percentage would be based in part on the type of institution and research. This approach is designed to be simple and reasonable, according to the group’s presentation, but it’s more general, which makes it “difficult to account for the wide array of research frameworks that now exist.”

The other model, FAIR No. 2, would more accurately reflect the actual costs of a project and make the structure for federal grants more like those from private foundations. Under this model, essential research support would be lumped into the project costs while funding for general research operations, such as payroll and procurement, would be a fixed percentage of the total budget. That change would likely increase the direct costs of the project... JAG’s expert panel noted that FAIR No. 2 would be a “significant departure” from the current approach, and universities would likely need more time to overhaul their processes for tracking costs. Still, the group said this model would better show what the money goes toward, addressing a key concern from Congress...

Full story at https://www.insidehighered.com/news/government/science-research-policy/2025/06/18/university-leaders-weigh-changes-research.

From Politico: Small colleges would get a break from a special tax on university endowment earnings under the latest draft of Senate Republicans’ domestic policy megabill. A revised version of the legislation released overnight exempts schools from the levy if they have fewer than 3,000 tuition-paying students. That’s up from the current threshold of 500 tuition-paying students that lawmakers had previously planned to stick by. The change comes as lawmakers attempt to finalize the details of their sprawling tax, energy, defense and immigration bill they hope to get to President Donald Trump’s desk by early next month...

Full story at https://www.politico.com/live-updates/2025/06/28/congress/senate-republicans-further-dial-back-endowment-tax-plans-00430938.