To Elaine Steward:

I think your onto an interesting concept, and that is perception.   If
faculty perceive there is "extra" money to give away, then they want for
themselves, particularly if they have raised more than their fair share to
the school.   Faculty need to feel appreciated, as well, in some sort of way
as well.   If an institution is perceived as always having extra money, it
could be interrupted in a number of different ways, some which would bear no
semblance to reality.    I'm struck by your comment about the perception
that indirect costs may not be real, if we always have extra to give away.
The general public already has a hard enough time understanding this
concept.     Perhaps, we should change the name of indirect costs, to what
they really are, ie. Administrative and Facility Costs, to dispel the
notions that these are not real costs, but are some type of blackbox magical
accounting inventions.    Aren't most institutions having some type of
financial difficulty in recovering the  increasing burden of administrative
and facility costs from their recent indirect cost negotiations?  If so,
perhaps this has not been communicated effectively to everyone.

Gary P. Naegel
Administrator, Department of Pharmacology
Yale School of Medicine
(203) 785-4373
xxxxxx@yale.edu
 ----------
From: RESADM-L
To: Multiple recipients of list RESADM-L
Subject: Re: Indirect cost disbursement
Date: Thursday, November 03, 1994 8:35AM

The various replies to this inquiry help me a lot in
understanding why P.I.'s think of indirect cost recovery as
"profit."  It's a real connundrum;  we all know the costs are
real, but each time we "give" any part of the money back to the
P.I. it reinforces the notion that the money is not really
needed.

I don't have any answers here - just an observation.  At the
University of Southern California, all of the "income" goes to
the school, but then so do all of the indirect expenses.  It's up
to the Dean to balance the budget, and since money is fungible,
s/he may, if s/he wishes, tell the P.I.'s that they're getting
back some of the money they earned.  I'm not at all sure this
works to anyone's benefit in the long run.

Elaine Steward
University of Southern California/Information Sciences Institute