There was a moment during the Second World War when President Roosevelt summoned Vannevar Bush to the Oval Office. Bush was director of the Scientific Research and Development Office and a close ally of Roosevelt. It was in 1944 and becoming more and more clear that the Allies would win victory in Europe.
“What will happen to science after the war?” FDR asked Bush.
“He’s going to fall flat on his face,” said Bush.
“What are we going to do about it?” Roosevelt asked.
Bush was characteristic frank: “We would be better to do something damn quick.”
Some 80 years later, this message is just as urgent.
The fundamental relationship between our country’s research universities and the federal government was established during the greatest crisis that the world had seen. Roosevelt and Bush have understood that scientific resources in American universities should be mobilized to help win the war against fascism.
And win it, they did it, with the development of bloody vaccines and substitutes to keep the troops in good health and technologies such as radar, aeronautical innovations and the atomic bomb.
One of the extremely important decisions made during the war has been that the Research Council for National Defense would not centralize the search for war in the government -controlled laboratories, but rather places research contracts with individual scientists and their universities.
The cabinet called on university presidents not only because the faculty would remain in place, but also because the Council has reimbursed universities for direct research costs and indirect costs for facilities and administration. In fact, the idea was to use these reimbursements to attract universities to undertake research on behalf of the federal government. The war was disastrous and the help of the best scientific minds in the country was essential.
During the war, there were debates on indirect costs. But by its conclusion, the established policies and practices concerning the relationship between the federal government and the universities have been solidified.
The results of this partnership, in particular by growth in research expenditure of the Department of Defense, the expansion of the National Institutes of Health and the creation of the National Science Foundation and National Aeronautics and Space Administration, were simply amazing.
American research universities, and by extension, our higher education system, are the best in the world.
Students around the world know that our universities are the best and are ready to pay to attend the best possible education.
Why do our scientists earn more Nobel Prize?
Because as a nation, we have invested in research.
Why did almost all companies have launched their fundamental research and rely on universities?
Because they know that high quality basic research can be carried out at a lower cost on campuses only in a company.
This collaboration created the Internet, put a man on the Moon, finished the polio in the United States, blunted the scourge of AIDS and put the world in the palm of our hands with the smartphone.
There is no other partnership like this on the planet.
And we risk undermining it with a short -sighted reflection.
As a nation, we have to do something “damn fast” about a partnership threatened by slash and burning budget cuts and a delivery of science which is nothing less than a dismantling of eight decades resounding success.
The major threat is a passage to artificially limit the reimbursement of indirect costs To balance the budgets of agencies that support university research. Twenty-two states complaint filed Monday To block this action, and rightly so. A federal judge temporarily arrested Change in these 22 states in response to the pursuit.
Indirect costs are the expenses of the facilities and administrative that universities are initiating while carrying out work funded by NIH, NSF, NASA and other agencies.
The federal government strictly limits which can be requested as direct research funds. Universities cannot charge heat, light, waste disposal, animal care infrastructure or regulatory compliance costs as direct costs. This despite the fact that the university must spend money on these essential costs to carry out research.
Each university negotiates its indirect cost rate according to the construction costs, staff and regulations that apply to animal and human research.
Trump’s current administration has entered the limitation of reimbursement of indirect costs to 15% as a significant means of reducing budgets from our federal research agencies.
It would be a catastrophic blow for universities research. Revolutionary sciences in universities simply cannot occur if they cannot recover the costs of electricity, laboratory space and other indirect costs necessary for research.
This is equivalent to a surrender of our world domination in innovation. Because for most universities, the only source of additional income is students’ tuition fees. And I never thought it was fair to charge students with the research requested and conducted for federal research agencies. I believe that students and parents agree with me.
In addition, these types of poorly informed proposals finally reinforce our ability to make higher education accessible and affordable, away from the millions of future American innovators and creators.
By reducing indirect costs, the federal government will force universities to reduce research that could help develop the next vaccine or heal, or the next technological innovation that will create new businesses or help secure our country.
Universities are engaged in transparency, careful management of taxpayers’ dollars and quality research and training.
Although the current indirect cost system is complex, it has endured. It is an integral part of a partnership that has brought enormous advantages to the inhabitants of our country and the world.
We absolutely have to protect it.