Research is far more expensive than many people may think. The reason for this is the huge overheads universities charge to cover the cost of their buildings and pay the wages of the many managers and admin staff that they employ.
To give a brief example:
I am a university lecturer with a PhD and professional publications. My full-time salary is c.£40k. To buy out a single day of my time, the university would charge the funder c.£60k. That’s 150% my full time salary, for just a single day of my time.
Meanwhile, if I want to employ a full-time research assistant educated to Masters level, working five days a week and earning c.£25k, the university would charge the funder c.£100k.
For that amount of money, you could employ more than two of me to conduct the same research full time and to a better standard than the research assistant might be expected to do it.
However, in this case, the system is such that the university would prefer to employ someone on c.£25k and then buy out a fraction of my time to supervise them, in order that it looks good on their impact stats, and they can keep me doing the ‘main’ thing they actually want me to do, which is to teach (and so earn the university even more money[1]).
The continue with this same example, the cost of the arrangement I have described would be £100k (research assistant) + £60k (me on a day a week) = c.£160k.
Of which, only about a 1/5 would go on the salary costs of the people doing the actual work (c.£25k for the assistant, plus 1/5 of my wage @c.£8k = £33k total).
(33/160)*100 = 20.6%.
This is one of many reasons why research is so expensive, and why the ‘big’ research grants aren’t ever really as impactful as they could be. Quite simply, too much research money is being used to cross subsidise other elements of the university and not enough time is given to professional academics to do the actual job of research.
Things then get even more complicated when you consider just how much admin work is involved in managing any sort of funded project. Aside from the time-consuming process of submitting bids in the first place (most of which end up being unsuccessful), a lot of the time actually ‘doing’ the project is spent doing things like managing stakeholders, submitting ethics forms, drawing up work packages, sending emails, writing up reports and trying to demonstrate ‘impact’.
All of which takes away from the actual activity of doing research. So even with only 20.6% of funds paying for the actual ‘work’ of researchers, a significant portion of that money is spent overcoming bureaucratic hurdles and dealing with (often unnecessary) admin.
And this is just the tip of a very big iceberg…
Academic conferences
Another key part of research is the role of the academic conference.
In theory, academic conferences are supposed to be a place for researchers to share their work, find out about the work of others, and then generally network with colleagues and other interested parties to talk about all things research-related.
While they may be a great idea in principle, all too often academic conferences are seen as another money-making opportunity for the people at the top.
To give another brief example:
If I want to host an academic conference, in the UK at least, I must pay my university for the privilege of doing so, even if the rooms are empty, and I am bringing people (and therefore, money) into the university and the region by doing so.
To cover the costs imposed on me by my university I have two options: either apply for funding (which is a time-consuming and often unsuccessful venture), or opt to pass the cost onto the people attending.
But this isn’t the only cost I would have to pass on.
If I wanted to put on lunch for delegates, or even at the barest minimum, a coffee break, I am forced to use the university’s own catering service, as other options are not allowed. These services are (as you might imagine) really rather expensive, and the quality of coffee is often quite poor.
Again, if I want to fund any of this, I am forced to either put in a bid and hope for some money, or failing that, pass on the cost to the people attending.
The result of all this is that inevitably, even modest conferences often have a fee attached to them that is often several hundred pounds.
Now of course, many delegates cannot afford several hundred pounds to attend a conference. Especially when this fee comes on top of travel and accomodation. Most academics will not pay out of their own pockets (most couldn’t afford to anyway), and so the money to attend must either come from their own university departmental budget, or must from some sort of funding bid that the individual has won…
Are you starting to see a pattern developing here?
The changing nature of universities
These two examples go to show how the core purpose of universities is being undermined by the neoliberal drive to rationalise every aspect of research and education in order to generate a profit. It is a self-perpetuating machine driven by selfishness and greed, where success is measured in spreadsheets, and not in terms of the things learnt, or the lives changes – the things academia really should be about.
It really does make you wonder how much longer the system will continue to last…
[1] Despite what anyone in might tell you, teaching is far more valuable than research, and generates far more income. It is therefore far more profitable for a university to use academics for teaching.