The reaction to Trump's new NIH policy of a maximum 15% overhead generated quite a stir in academia. But only from administrators and their lobbyists. Trump didn't cut the research itself, but the amount universities can charge as "overhead" because professors and students use their facilities. For instance, MIT charges 60% overhead. If you are a professor who got a $1M grant, you only have 400K to spend on your research. The rest pays for the lab location, at market rate, + the university equipment that is being "rented" to the professor. I strongly believe "overhead" costs have been used to enrich university endowments across the nation and have had little impact on the research itself.
Discussion
It's true that, to some extent, university administrations started abusing the federal government's goodwill.
#NIH
I agree and have my own experience dealing with the issue of indirects that the public likely doesn't fully understand. Institutions may not like or want grants that don't offer high indirects, even if the funding opportunity is promising for the investigator. Sometimes, institutions may only approve the submission of a grant if investigators agree to lower the amount offered toward a clinicians' time to the research to 'offset the cost' of less available indirects. Other times, an increase in an institutions indirect requests may cause a research team to lose funds dedicated to them on an ongoing study. Very often, this occurs with the actual research team having no clarity regarding where the indirects are going. I think if we were to achieve decentralized fundraising for medical research, contributors and investors would have a strong demand to know exactly where there money goes, and that it helps the true cause of the research.
Fix the money, fix the world...
This is just a good idea. Even Obama floated this idea.