When a researcher at Texas Tech gets a grant from a federal agency like the National Science Foundation or the National Institutes of Health, Texas Tech gets a cut of the money for all the indirect costs of research. These F&A costs include things like building operations and utilities. The previous F&A rate at Texas Tech was 53%. That means that for every $100 of grant funding, $47 goes to my lab and $53 goes to Texas Tech. You can think of it as paying taxes on grant funding.
The F&A rate is higher at universities with stronger research programs. The surprising news was the jump from 53% to 71%. The quantity and quality of research at Texas Tech is increasing, but we aren’t about to dethrone Harvard, MIT, or Stanford. Their F&A rates at 69%, 59%, and 54.4%, respectively. For some Texas comparisons, the F&A rates at the University of Texas (Austin), Texas A&M (College Station), and Rice University are 58.5%, 52.5%, and 56.5%.
Texas Tech was concerned that the 71% rate would be overly burdensome on researchers, and so they renegotiated it to 65%. They also said there would be an automatic 8% F&A return to the researcher. Does that make the actual F&A rate 57%? Whatever the exact rate ends up being, I wonder why our facilities are suddenly so much more expensive to maintain?
Motor Behaviour 