On Wed, November 9th, Bruce Steinert wrote:

>Any possibility of getting a reprint (email or snail mail) or listing the
>highlites on the list?

The Chronicle offers a gopher and WWW service called "Academe This Week,"
which provides a table of contents and highlights of major stories in the
current issue.  I thought this might be a good way to get at least an
abstract of the article I cited.  However, the Chronicle truly means "this
week;" they unfortunately do not offer access to the info from previous
weeks.  While that is not a viable option for my purpose, if you are
interested nonetheless, the gopher address is chronicle.merit.edu and the
WWW address is http://chronicle.merit.edu

As for highlights, I've routed that issue to other offices and am thus
without the benefit of having it in front of me, but I'll try my best from
memory.  The author was in defense of charging indirect costs and knows that
they are an integral part of conducting programmatic and research projects.
He addressed the issue of why IDC rates vary so much from one institution to
another (i.e. why isn't there more consistency) by explaining that different
institutions have different operational dynamics, and that the rates are
determined by such things as infrastructure and administrative costs within
that institution.

He also discussed how the whole issue of IDCs are perceived to those who are
not involved in day-to-day research and administration of federally-funded
(for the most part) projects.  The term "indirect costs" has kindy of a
vague, shifty feel about it, and may be construed as pork or administrative
bloat.  He suggests a better and more explanitive term might be
"Administrative and Facilities Costs."  And I might add, with the
Republicans now controlling both houses of Congress, they will be on the
lookout for any hint of what might be considered government waste of
taxpayer's $$.  IDCs may be one of those targets.

There's more but my memory fades at this point.  Hope this helps out.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
David Muhlena, Development Associate
Office of Corporate, Foundation and Government Relations
Gustavus Adolphus College
St. Peter, Minnesota  56082
tel:     (507) 933-7045
fax:    (507) 933-6270
net:   xxxxxx@gac.edu
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