NIH Funding, What Does UC Have to Lose?
Late on Friday, February 7th, the National Institutes of Health announced that, rather than pay the rate carefully negotiated between the NIH and each individually research institution, “for new grant awards and existing grant awards, effective as of the date of this Guidance’s issuance. Pursuant to this Supplemental Guidance, there will be a standard indirect rate of 15% across all NIH grants for indirect costs in lieu of a separately negotiated rate for indirect costs in every grant.”
There has been a lot of discussion around the web about what “indirect costs” are, how important they are, and how they are negotiated. But how much would this change cost UC? NIH has a public database of funds they have awarded that breaks out what was provided for direct cost and for indirect cost. Using that information for UC for the most recent full year, 2024, we can calculate how much money we are talking about here. This would be a $420 million cut to UC.
| Campus | Direct Cost | Indirect Cost | If indirect cost was always 15% of direct cost | Loss to UC |
| Division of Ag. and Natural Resources | $432,458 | $233,047 | $64,869 | $168,178 |
| Davis | $199,603,639 | $79,863,723 | $29,940,546 | $49,923,177 |
| Berkeley | $116,043,493 | $42,372,681 | $17,406,524 | $24,966,157 |
| Los Angeles | $398,416,287 | $120,218,831 | $59,762,443 | $60,456,388 |
| Riverside | $28,619,315 | $11,581,772 | $4,292,897 | $7,288,875 |
| Santa Barbara | $16,462,662 | $5,770,252 | $2,469,399 | $3,300,853 |
| Santa Cruz | $34,270,801 | $11,966,249 | $5,140,620 | $6,825,629 |
| Merced | $4,889,461 | $1,984,893 | $733,419 | $1,251,474 |
| San Diego | $400,566,056 | $163,703,469 | $60,084,908 | $103,618,561 |
| San Francsico | $601,053,867 | $212,736,783 | $90,158,080 | $122,578,703 |
| Irvine | $189,909,396 | $68,770,523 | $28,486,409 | $40,284,114 |
| TOTAL UC | $1,990,267,435 | $719,202,223 | $298,540,115 | $420,662,108 |