Notable NIH Grants and Universities’ Wasteful Spending
A review of the literature
by John Morrison
February 22, 2025
List of grants
The NIH’s most recent budget is for $47.7 billion.
The NIH’s most recent figures show that it received a budget total of $47.7 billion. The total breaks down as:
$46.1 billion given under the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2023 (P.L. 117-328)
"An additional $1.412 billion derived from PHS Evaluation financing.”
“$141.5 million mandatory funding for the Special type 1 diabetes account.”
“$1.085 billion received from 21st Century Cures Act allocations.”
The NIH in FY 2024 awarded “at least $32 billion on nearly 60,000 grants, including medical research in areas like cancer, genetics and infectious disease.” Some $23 billion can be classified as “direct” research costs, while $9 billion can be classified as “indirect” or overhead costs.
The New York Times reports that “in the 2024 fiscal year, the NIH spent at least $32 billion on nearly 60,000 grants, including medical research in areas like cancer, genetics and infectious disease.”
“Of that, $23 billion went to “direct” research costs, such as microscopes and researchers’ salaries, according to an Upshot analysis of NIH grant data.”
“The other $9 billion went to the institutions’ overhead, or “indirect costs,” which can include laboratory upkeep, utility bills, administrative staff and access to hazardous materials disposal, all of which research institutions say is essential to making research possible.”
Ten biggest NIH recipients: According to the NIH funding portal, John Hopkins received the most money in FY 2024 with over $857 million, and Stanford University rounded out the top ten with over $613 million. But you’ll notice some discrepancies below.
Negotiated indirect cost rates for the top ten recipients of NIH money. Also included are some examples of the actual indirect rates received and how much money the institutions will lose.
*Please note that the negotiated rate is often much higher than the actual rate. A student newspaper reports that “these high negotiated rates, the likes of which NIH listed as a reason for the cut, can be misleading as universities often seem to receive less than their negotiated rate. WashU, for instance, has an actual average indirect cost rate of 38.5%, instead of the publicized 55.5%”
John Hopkins: 63.7% but 27.5% (John Hopkins says it received over $1 billion, but the NIH portal and NYT data are different).
“In fiscal year 2024, the university received a total of approximately $1,022,300,000 in research funding from NIH, in connection with more than 3,200 active awards, including approximately $281,446,000—27.5% of the total—as reimbursement for what is described as indirect costs”
University of California, San Francisco: 59%.
The University of California (not just San Francisco) said in a press release that “The NIH is the largest funder of UC research, funding that totaled $2.6 billion in the last academic year.”
University of Michigan: 56%.
Washington University: 55% but received 38.5%.
University of Pennsylvania: 62.5%.
According to a University spokesperson, the cut will cost the university $240 million.
University of Pittsburgh: 59%.
“At Pitt, the change will mean about $183 million less in NIH grants, a cut of more than 25% from the $661.2 million that the university received from the NIH overall in 2024.”
Yale University: 67.5%.
Columbia University Health Sciences: 64.5% for FY 25, but almost 30% received in FY 2024.
Within this total, Columbia’s indirect costs totaled $180,829,758—almost 30 percent of its total awards.
Stanford University:
“Stanford can receive a maximum of $54 in indirect costs for every $100 in direct costs; in practice, the fraction for many grants is lower.”
“For Stanford, the cap announced Friday would represent a reduction in NIH funding of approximately $160 million per year.”
Trump wants to cap indirect costs at 15%. The New York Times estimates that for every dollar of direct funding, grants worth over $1 million received an average of 40 cents of indirect funding. The Chronicle for Higher Education says “the average indirect-cost rate of the NIH’s institutional grants is 27 to 28 percent.”
The New York Times reports that Trump’s proposal “aims to reduce funding for those indirect costs to a set 15 percent rate that the administration says would save about $4 billion a year.”
“Among the 2024 grants that we analyzed, institutions that received more than $1 million in NIH support got an average of 40 cents of indirect funding for every dollar of direct funding.”
Meanwhile, the Chronicle for Higher Education says “the average indirect-cost rate of the NIH’s institutional grants is 27 to 28 percent.”
The New York Times estimates that Trump’s cap would reduce grant funding by at least $5 billion and that the top ten institutions that receive NIH funding will lose over $100 million a year on average.
*Please note that the NYT’s funding totals don’t match up to the NIH funding portal numbers
The New York Times reports that:
“The Upshot analysis estimates that a 15 percent rate would have reduced funding for the grants that received NIH support in 2024 by at least $5 billion.”
“We estimate that virtually all universities and hospitals would see fewer funds on similar projects in the future. The 10 institutions that receive the most money from the NIH stand to lose more than $100 million per year on average.”
*New York Times calculations - please note that the NYT’s funding totals don’t match up to the NIH funding portal numbers
New York Times calculations - please note that the NYT’s funding totals don’t match up to the NIH funding portal numbers.
How much do universities spend on DEI and administration?
“The Goldwater Institute report stated students and state taxpayers are paying for DEI general education course mandates of $1.8 billion in tuition and state appropriations over each four-year period.”
“The report goes on to say that the undergraduate student population at public universities spent at least 40 million student hours satisfying DEI general education course requirements.”
Forbes reported that “Between 1976 and 2018, full-time administrators and other professionals employed by those institutions increased by 164% and 452%, respectively. Meanwhile, the number of full-time faculty employed at colleges and universities in the U.S. increased by only 92%, marginally outpacing student enrollment which grew by 78%.”
U.S. News reports, "At public four-year schools in 2010, 32.1% of expenditures were for instruction and 23.7% for academic support, student services, and institutional support. In 2021, instructional spending had decreased 4.7 percentage points to 27.4% of total expenditures while spending on academic support, student services, and institutional support dropped less than 1 percentage point, to 22.9%.”
“The change was more dramatic at private, nonprofit four-year schools. In 2010, 32.7% of expenditures were for instruction and 30% were for academic support, student services, and institutional support. The dominance flipped in 2021, with instruction declining to 29% of expenditures while academic support, student services, and institutional support accounted for 29.6%.”
Examples of NIH grants for leftist-related issues
In June 2023, Forbes reported on the NIH’s latest round of funding as part of the scheme. The NIH awarded over $64 million over five years “to increase diversity and inclusion among the nation’s biomedical faculty.”
The universities were the University of Michigan, Vanderbilt University, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, and the University of Texas at El Paso.
But it turned out the $64 million sum was part of a “$241 million taxpayer-funded scheme to promote scientists from minority backgrounds who tick DEI checklists, rather than the best candidates.”
The Manhattan Institute reports that “Since the launch of the Sexual and Gender Minority Research Office (SGMRO) in 2015, the NIH has allocated almost $628 million to transgender research more broadly across over 300 grants.”
The Manhattan Institute reports that “a cursory look at NIH-funded grants between 2017 and 2024 filtered through the keywords “institutional racism” reveals 48 funded projects totaling $122 million in taxpayer money.”
The NIH allocated $30 million to 10 groups over five years “to understand how ableism—discrimination and social prejudice against people with disabilities—contributes to health disparities.”
Christopher Ruffo writes in City Journal that the NIH:
“Granted Yale University $3 million to study HIV risk by tracking gay men with GPS monitors; the project’s ultimate goal was to develop ‘a real-time phone app’ partially on the tracking data.”
“The agency also awarded Stanford $3.7 million to study ‘[s]ex hormone effects on neurodevelopment’ in ‘transgender adolescents,’ which researchers hope will ‘advanc[e] the empirical basis of clinical care for this vulnerable population of youth.’”
“The agency allotted $3 million to Columbia University, for example, to use Twitter ‘to enhance the social support for Hispanic and Black dementia caregivers’ and to study the ‘ethical use of minority detection algorithms.’ Remarkably, this award funded the creation of a ‘Black Tweet detection algorithm’ to help curate posts ‘tailored to Black and Hispanic dementia caregivers.’”
The Cato Institute reported on some famous historical examples of wasteful spending by universities.
Andrew Gillen of the Cato Institute reported that “In the 1980s and 1990s, Stanford University was including costs for ‘flowers for… its president’s home and the depreciation of a yacht’ in their indirect cost formula.”
Gillen continues that “Director of Science Programs at the National Association of Scholars, J. Scott Turner, highlighted more recent abuse, including one researcher (Jeffrey Parsons, a psychologist who spent most of his career at Hunter College of the City University of New York) using indirect funding for ‘holidays to exotic locations, drunken parties peppered with outlandish sexual behaviors, frequent visits to gay bars, drugs, and humiliating demands made to subordinates.’”
He adds, “A public California college was planning to build a new dorm that would cost $330,000 per room.”
