Fellow Research Administrators:

At the NIH update session at the last national SRA meeting in Philadelphia,
NIH had asked that institutions put the actual salaries in the
institutional base salary column, but the salary requested should only
reflect the results of the calculation of the percent effort times base
salary unless the base salary exceeds the NIH cap, in which case, it should
be the percent effort times the NIH salary cap.

The reason for reporting the actual institutional base salary is that when
Congress ask NIH what the highest salary for PI's are, NIH reports to
Congress the cap.  Congress then doesn't get accurate information and
believes it doesn't need to increase the cap since it appears that the cap
is at the right spot.  For that reason, the NIH cap had been at $125,000
for a very long time.  It was only recently that they increased it to
$125,900.

At the meeting, NIH asked institutions to report the actual salaries when
possible even if it exceeds the cap so that it can have some data of what
the true salaries for investigators on NIH grants are.  NIH hopes to use
the data to adjust the cap so that institutions and investigators can be
properly compensated.

Those of you who attended the same session can verify my memory in case my
mind was elsewhere in Philly during that session, but I believe that the
above is correct.

Some institutions may encounter resistance in reporting salaries that
exceed the cap from your PIs as the PIs may feel that they don't want their
fellow scientists to know their real salaries or they may feel it may have
an adverse impact on their application if their real salaries were known.
That is an internal matter each institution will need to address
internally.  JC.

John Chinn
Director, Sponsored Programs Office
Albert Einstein Healthcare Network
5501 Old York Road
Philadelphia, PA  19141
Phone: 215-456-7214
Fax: 215-456-8122
xxxxxx@aehn2.einstein.edu

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