We have just switched to school-based budgeting which means, in part, that
deans have the authority to forgive part of the IDC that a grantor is
unwilling to pay. Faculty are concerned that this will have a chilling
effect on their attepts to get support because the deans will be very
sensitive to their bottom line. That may very well be true until we have a
couple yrs. experience with school-based budgeting under our belt.

I don't have to tell you all  that, by that time, government and private
funding will be even more difficult to get. Last week someone mentioned
that the IDC gap might be closed by folks giving up their rights to return
IDC $s that they would have otherwise gotten. That was very helpful but I
think that I am going to need multiple strategies.

One I've been considering is asking administration to allow faculty to
charge what the market will bear for their services, when they can, but
have them the calculate IDC on the current formula which uses their actual
faculty salaries as the base for the IDC (our IDC base is salaries and
wages). What do you think?

Also, do any of your institutions make allowance for the fact  that the
private sector virtually never accepts the federally negotiated IDC rate?
Are your schools and departments charged that same fed IDC rate for their
normal operations or a lower one?

Any other ideas?

Any feed back would be appreciated.

John Cosgrove

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