Indirect

UCLA is having special problems with the feds. But all research universities in the US are having to deal with the issue of capped indirect costs on grants. An article in Politico says that despite demands by some to resist all demands, there are talks between higher ed lobbying groups and the feds: 

First Columbia, Brown and UPenn folded. Harvard is reportedly looking for a way out after President Donald Trump cut its health and science research funding by billions. Now academia writ large is trying to persuade him to back off his plan to slash universities’ budgets. At Trump’s urging, the National Institutes of Health in February said it was cutting by more than $4 billion the amount it pays to universities to help them cover administrative and facilities costs tied to research grants. The overture from university lobbyists comes even as the universities have succeeded in blocking Trump’s plan in court — and have won the backing of key Republican lawmakers. The universities’ eagerness to cut a deal shows that they don’t think they can hold off Trump indefinitely. A cut of the magnitude the NIH sought would put a major dent in their budgets...

“It’s been made extremely clear to us from day one by members of Congress that if we don’t do something, somebody else will,” Kelvin Droegemeier, a professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign who’s spearheading the effort on behalf of a coalition of universities and research institutes, told POLITICO. “They said continuing forward with the current model is not in the cards. We took it to mean we could help be a part of that change or wait for it to happen.”

...Even as schools were seeking relief in court and in Congress, a cadre of groups that lobby for them, including the Association of American Universities, the Association of American Medical Colleges, the Association of Independent Research Institutes and the American Association of State Colleges and Universities, was working out a compromise plan to offer Trump. Others in the crosshairs of Trump’s bid to cut costs, such as hospitals and research institutes, are working with them... [Last] week, Trump tried a new tactic to wrest indirect funding from top-tier universities by issuing an executive order calling for agencies to give preference to universities with lower indirect costs when issuing awards.

The university-led group announced this spring that it was working on a new model, one that was “simple and easily explained,” and in a nod to the administration’s priorities: “efficient and transparent.” The Financial Accountability in Research, or FAIR plan, would consist of two options for research organizations to recoup facilities and administrative expenses from the government. The first, a detailed accounting of indirect project costs, and the second, a shorter, simpler fixed percentage of a project’s budget...

“The biggest difference is rather than having an indirect cost rate, which is negotiated across the entire university, this model calls for indirect costs to be estimated for every project,” Jeremy Berg, former director of the National Institute of General Medical Sciences, an arm of the $48 billion grant-giving National Institutes of Health, told POLITICO... “There’s been so much of a fuss made at this point,” Berg said, adding, “If the universities dug in their heels and said, ‘We like the old model.’ That’s not going to happen. Instead, there’ll be some fixed cap, the way the administration proposed out of the blue.” ...

Full story at https://www.politico.com/news/2025/08/09/universities-trump-science-health-funding-00500531.

At the moment, indirect costs are just one part of a larger issue for UCLA. But it seems unlikely that UCLA would opt out of a deal on indirect costs - if there is one.