These ideas have a long past in American history. Ezra Cornell and A.D. White created their University as a reaction to the then-typical university that emphasized Greek, Latin and Theology. Memorization and rote learning was replaced by critical thinking, problem solving and experimentation. Yet, populists attacked Cornell as being anti-religion.
After World War II, a fever of anti-communism swept the nation, and universities appeared to be harboring communists who were conspiring to undermine the nation.
Populists saw a concentration of power in the elites. They fought to shift decision-making from cronyism to merit, from Northeast entitlement to a geographically dispersed system, and from a Harvard-Yale duopoly to a more inclusive model.
However, it always pays to know “the right people,” and in many cases (including Donald J Trump) those people have been Ivy League graduates.
The nation’s research structure evolved from World War II. Methods of warfare required scientific research, and almost all of the nation’s resources were being redeployed to win the war. Most of this research was either performed directly under the military or under contracts issued by the military to industry or academia. Out of necessity, the research was classified and not freely shared in academic circles.
For example, prior to launching the full scale Manhattan Project to build the first atomic bomb, Enrico Fermi performed early work on chain reactions at the Columbia Physics Department and later achieved the first chain reaction at a squash court under the football stands at the University of Chicago.
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From 1940 to 1945, a group of engineers at the MIT Radiation Lab conducted important research into microwaves and radar. This group later evolved into the present-day MIT Lincoln Lab.
Curtis-Wright Airplane Division built large wind tunnels as a part of a research and development facility in Buffalo, New York during World War II. In 1945, Curtis-Wright donated the lab to Cornell who operated it as the Cornell Aeronautical Lab, but later sold it in 1972 in the wake of anti-Vietnam War sentiments.
National Science Foundation
Throughout World War II, Vannevar Bush, who had been the Vice President of MIT, held two key posts, head of the U.S. Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD) and the National Defense Research Committee (NDRC) which coordinated all defense research and development. At the end of the war, he was a key Presidential Advisor who created the framework for peacetime, merit-based research and ultimately the creation of the National Science Foundation. The NSF Director and Deputy Director are nominated by the President and confirmed by the Senate. The National Science Board is 24-experts appointed by the President that meet six times per year. Cornell President Frank H.T. Rhodes served on this Board.
In general, the NSF was structured to disperse research funding across the nation based on merit rather than having it concentrated in a few elite institutions. When the NSF decides to fund a topic, it puts out a call for proposals. Typically, the NSF receives about 50,000 grant proposals per year and funds about 10,000. Funding decisions are made by panels of expert reviewers who are not full-time government employees.
Congress does not earmark or interfere with the awards process, although on a few occasions Congress will attach riders to appropriation bills restricting specific forms of controversial research.
The NSF does not own and operate its research facilities. Instead, it contracts design and operation to grantees.
From World War II onward, the military also continues to fund basic research through the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Biomedical research was funded by the NIH. Since the NSF’s founding in 1950, it controls about 25% of total federal research.
National Institute of Health
The NIH dates back to the Hygienic Lab founded in 1886 as a part of the Marine Hospital Service. That service later became the Public Health Service, and in 1930, the Hygienic Lab was renamed the NIH. In 1938, the NIH moved to its current campus in Bethesda, Maryland.
So, unlike the NSF, the NIH employs a number of researchers and operates its own research hospitals, somewhat in competition with its grant-holders. However, about 10% of the NIH budget is spent internally, with 90% going to outside grants.
Grant applications can be submitted in response to topic requests issued by the NIH or on any topic of the researcher’s interest. Grant applications are then distributed to peer review panels who read through the applications and then meet to debate their scientific merit and priority. Over the past decade a researcher has about a 34% chance of having a grant funded.
When grant applications are compared, it would be unfair to penalize researchers based in areas with high utility rates or with high laboratory space costs. So, the NIH divides its grants into two parts – direct costs which includes salaries and equipment and indirect costs which includes utilities, facility costs and other overhead expenses.
Grants are typically issued for a fixed period of time and with a specified budget of direct costs. The NIH understands that each grant will also pay for the overhead charged by the host institution. For example, Cornell has a 64% overhead rate. So, if a peer review panel decides that a $1 million grant would be a valuable expenditure, Cornell will receive $1,640,000. The researcher must track and document how the $1 million in direct costs are spent, but Cornell administrators carefully add up everything spent on electricity, janitors, safety inspections, space rent, etc and keep that data ready for the NIH auditors. Once the NIH approves Cornell’s overhead recovery rate, it applies to all grants. This means that the janitor does not have to log his time on cleaning each separate lab room and Cornell does not have to put a separate electricity meter on each lab room. Instead, such costs are spread out to different research grants in proportion to the size of each grant.
Researchers are not penalized when competing for NIH grants based upon the size of Cornell’s overhead factor vs. competing institutions. Yet, this method provides Cornell researchers with safe, clean and uptodate lab facilities.
On February 7, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced a 15% cap on its research overhead recovery rate. This ceiling will apply to all new research grants as well as existing grants as of the February 10 effective date. In response, on Monday, February 10, Cornell, together with the Association of American Universities, the American Council on Education, the Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities, and 11 other research universities filed a lawsuit seeking the restoration of prior overhead recovery rates.
Political Problems
The NIH budget is prepared to reflect ongoing research grants and a projection of new grants to be awarded during a fiscal year. That budget is then sent to the Secretary of Health and Human Services and after much give-and-take a final proposal is sent to the Office of Management and Budget to be incorporated into the President’s budget. Congress rarely adopts the President’s budget, and given the popularity of biomedical and health research, Congress has grown the NIH budget much more rapidly than inflation or the Administrations’ desires.
However, at times Congress attempts to control specific NIH spending through budget riders. For example, when gun violence was recognized as a major cause of avoidable deaths, the NIH and CDC proposed to study the problem, but Congress outlawed such research for 20 years.
Since January 20th, there is evidence that the post-World War II model of leaving research decisions to peer review panels has hit a roadblock within the Executive Branch. For example, the NIH has terminated dozens of existing research grants related to vaccine use and hesitancy, The NIH told researchers that their ongoing studies no longer aligned with the Trump administration’s priorities.
Reportedly, more than $250 million of the $400 million of Columbia funds frozen for Title VI violations is NIH grants. In the federal fiscal year 2024, Columbia University received more than $690 million from the NIH, most of which went to Columbia’s medical center. This means that Columbia biomedical researchers are being punished without showing a connection to Pro-Palestine protests. Technically, the NIH must comply with certain procedures when it terminates any contract or grant.
The NIH has been ordered to fire 1,165 probationary employees, including nurses at the NIH’s research hospital in Bethesda, MD.
In addition to the Administration impairing existing grants, the peer-review process of awarding new grants has also been frozen. A recent Nature magazine article explains that a notice of NIH expert panel meetings is required to be published in the Federal Register. Because the Administration blocked the printing of these notices, the panel meetings in February were cancelled, and the hours spent evaluating proposals may have been wasted. The blocking of new NIH grants seems to be inconsistent with the claim that any savings from an overhead cap will be redirected to additional research projects. These blocks were lifted in mid-March, creating $1.5 billion in delayed research funding and a backlog in evaluating research proposals. NIH council meetings will be held in April.
The NIH offers a webpage to describe its current funding status. It notes that all new grants will be subject to its fixed cap on overhead recovery and that the “posting of new funding opportunities and policy guidance is currently on hold.”
The merit based, peer reviewed structure in place since World War II has been derailed and it is not clear what will replace it, perhaps Elon Musk playing Vannevar Bush to President Trump filling Roosevelt/Truman’s seat.
