I work in pharma and we do tons of medical research in the cloud and it was done before in academia; it typically wasn't my own university that developed (on its own from direct funding) the necessary infrastructure, but universities under contract, or NIH itself, or a consortia funded through grants. The university IT department itself struggled with just keeping wifi up, or giving us 10BT networks on a hub in an age when gigabit switches were common.
Note: I was not typical. I set up as a digital nomad a long time ago. A scientist with a lab on campus who pulls power, AC, and other resources from central services, must have some way of compensating the university, and you could argue that instead of a prenegotiated (and amortized) overhead, it could instead be a cost center billing (scientist gets contract, uses campus resources, gets billed directly for their consumption). Don't forget also that because of Bayh Dole, the university gets monetize the IP generated by their scientists (who typically do not see any direct revenue; instead, they have to make a startup that licenses the tech from the university).
My experience with overheads showed that the universities I worked at had the highest (50-75%) while less prestigious regional universities were more like 30%.
Oh! This is new: I just looked up Berkeley's rates now and they explicitly have an off-campus rate that is 25%, while the on-campus is 60%. Apparently the federal government was already capping off-campus at 25%! I also see that funding agencies like Gates, Chan-Zuckerberg, etc, already cap at around 10-15%. Man, the deans must be furious
The rules for off campus rates are pretty strict, and not just “I’m not in my office.” They get used for Extension, stuff like that.
Ironically, prohibiting “breaks” to Gates, Chan-Zuckerberg, etc. and saying the rate they get is the same as your NIH rate would probably go over well. Most people I know in research admin are perpetually annoyed that private foundations act like being subsidized is their right.
> I just looked up Berkeley's rates now and they explicitly have an off-campus rate that is 25%, while the on-campus is 60%. Apparently the federal government was already capping off-campus at 25%!
Off-campus is capped because the grant is then paying for rent on the lab space from the private landlord. Universities don't charge research labs for power, cooling, rent, janitorial, Internet, etc. Maybe they will start now.
Note: I was not typical. I set up as a digital nomad a long time ago. A scientist with a lab on campus who pulls power, AC, and other resources from central services, must have some way of compensating the university, and you could argue that instead of a prenegotiated (and amortized) overhead, it could instead be a cost center billing (scientist gets contract, uses campus resources, gets billed directly for their consumption). Don't forget also that because of Bayh Dole, the university gets monetize the IP generated by their scientists (who typically do not see any direct revenue; instead, they have to make a startup that licenses the tech from the university).
My experience with overheads showed that the universities I worked at had the highest (50-75%) while less prestigious regional universities were more like 30%.
Oh! This is new: I just looked up Berkeley's rates now and they explicitly have an off-campus rate that is 25%, while the on-campus is 60%. Apparently the federal government was already capping off-campus at 25%! I also see that funding agencies like Gates, Chan-Zuckerberg, etc, already cap at around 10-15%. Man, the deans must be furious