Cornell lacrosse 2020

[dag14]

PSU made a commitment to upgrading their lax program, and made him a great offer.  That his wife is a PSU alum didn't hurt.

[upprdeck]

PSU took money to create good hockey Lacrosse money.. Cornell takes money to build a college 200 miles from campus and then spend every free dollar to upgrade it and not actually spend money on the real campus.

[Trotsky]

Cornell takes money to build a college 200 miles from campus and then spend every free dollar to upgrade it and not actually spend money on the real campus.

That campus is going to return so much grant money those decision makers will retire very, very, very rich.

I wouldn't be surprised if all of CU Engineering vacates Ithaca someday.  (Good.  We can go back to being an Arts & Ag school.  Plow under the Eng quad and replant the trees).    Cornell Tech is going to be a license to 3D print money like only Stanford has seen.  It's going to come in handy when we yank their tax-exempt status.

[CU2007]

Cornell takes money to build a college 200 miles from campus and then spend every free dollar to upgrade it and not actually spend money on the real campus.

That campus is going to return so much grant money those decision makers will retire very, very, very rich.

I wouldn't be surprised if all of CU Engineering vacates Ithaca someday.  (Good.  We can go back to being an Arts & Ag school.  Plow under the Eng quad and replant the trees).    Cornell Tech is going to be a license to 3D print money like only Stanford has seen.  It's going to come in handy when we yank their tax-exempt status.

I'm not sure if this was said in jest, but if not can you point me in the direction of something useful regarding the tax-exempt debate? Something I've always wondered about

[TimV]

I wouldn't be surprised if all of CU Engineering vacates Ithaca someday.  (Good.  We can go back to being an Arts & Ag school.  Plow under the Eng quad and replant the trees).

Some trees would be good, but it would also be a great location for a full size football/lacrosse/soccer indoor facility.::bolt::

[Jeff Hopkins '82]

I wouldn't be surprised if all of CU Engineering vacates Ithaca someday.  (Good.  We can go back to being an Arts & Ag school.  Plow under the Eng quad and replant the trees).

Some trees would be good, but it would also be a great location for a full size football/lacrosse/soccer indoor facility.::bolt::

It would sure add importance to that long time rivalry with Columbia   ::rolleyes::

[upprdeck]

how does grant money really help the college? a small amount is kept, but research money doesnt really stay all that local for alot of this stuff.. it does pad the Profs salary though.

[Swampy]

how does grant money really help the college? a small amount is kept, but research money doesnt really stay all that local for alot of this stuff.. it does pad the Profs salary though.

You're right about grant money leaking out of the local economy. But this is far more likely in Ithaca than, say, New York City.

The amounts that pad faculty salaries are not that much. Grant money for salaries usually goes either for "release time," which buys out teaching obligations to free time up for research, or it goes for summer salary (and possibly winter if Cornell considers faculty off rather than employed during winter break). Release time substitutes but doesn't add to the salary. Summer salary is typically 25% to 33% of the usual 9-month academic year salary. So yeah, if a prof is making $100K per year, summer salary can make it $133K instead: substantial as a percentage increase, but hardly Jeff Bezos territory.

Lots of universities will use the money they save on salaries bought out for release time to hire graduate students, ABD's, and post-docs at a fraction of the Prof's salary. So universities love that because they can save big bucks by not having to pay regular faculty rates, in addition to collecting lots of overhead money.

Most grant money goes to equipment, graduate students, and the occasional postdoc or research scientist. If a center or some other organizational unit is involved, a good chunk might go to clerical & professional staff, and the like.

Then again, Cornell itself probably takes a substantial cut. E.g., suppose Cornell's federally approved overhead rate is 50%, which means on any grant's direct costs, overhead is an additional 50%. So a grant for $1 million in direct costs would bring in $1.5 mil. Now at most serious research universities this would be split something like the following: 50% to the university for heating, lighting, university police, maintenance, and other things not directly connected to the research; 50% of the remainder, or $250K in this example, to the prof's college, for similar stuff at the college level (e.g. clerical staff), and the remaining 25% would go to the prof's department for things like computers used for both teaching & research (which can't be treated as a direct cost because they're not dedicated solely to the individual research project). And at most serious research universities, the department will split its share of overhead with the P.I., who might then use it for things like travel to conferences, special computer equipment, books, etc.: stuff that's not necessarily related to the research per se, although it often is for things that can be used for both teaching and the research (e.g., lab equipment or a portable projector). Most universities don't allow individual profs to pay themselves out of overhead, especially since that's something funding agencies are willing to pay for. OTOH, it might be that a college, for example, is particularly interested in developing a track record in a certain kind of research and therefore use its overhead money to buy out certain professors' time or give new faculty members "start-up money." Or a university could use overhead to increase faculty salaries, in selected departments or across the board. But if so, the university better be sure the source of funds won't dry up; otherwise, it may have to raise tuition, etc. to pay for the new, higher salaries. Nonetheless, any grant monies paid as salary will typically replace another source or be confined to small-scale augmentation through summer salary and the like.

Of course, seminal research can lead to promotions and pay increases, but that's another story.

[scoop85]

I'm glad we never have thread drift anymore.

[Trotsky]

I wouldn't be surprised if all of CU Engineering vacates Ithaca someday.  (Good.  We can go back to being an Arts & Ag school.  Plow under the Eng quad and replant the trees).

Some trees would be good, but it would also be a great location for a full size football/lacrosse/soccer indoor facility.::bolt::

By the time this happens football will be illegal outside the slave states.

[upprdeck]

some of this is true.. over head is a bit off..  profs salary is not always a part of the grant depends on the prof and the research required.. roughl 70% of the money goes to staffing like grads.. 10-20 % for materials 10-20% for supplies .  also a million dollar grant could be 1-5 yrs or so so when you break that down by yr its way less than it seems when you factor in 70-80K for a grad student.

then add travel/conferences and everything adds up.

but overhead doesnt really add all that much to the campus if you take even 50% spread over 5 yrs thats 100k a yr. by the time you add cost of doing the overhead its pretty much a zero sum game and in some cases the overhead actually costs more than the grants..

the big issue is that the endowment is taking a hit.. some of the big hitters are earmarking funds to NYC and the central campus is actually getting less money than ever and overhead of the start up is really killing some budgets.

[RichH]

I'm glad we never have thread drift anymore.

There's no chance for drifts with so many plow drivers.

[billhoward]

I'm glad we never have thread drift anymore.

But what amazing thread drift. Actually a useful discussion about grant funding, how much covers overhead, how much overhead there is.

The drift raised an interesting question about whether money going to Cornell Tech in NYC is stripping the Ithaca campus bare of alumni donor dollars. The big donation for Cornell Tech was all the money of our lifetime we spent on duty free liquor in the DuFry airport stores of Chuck Feeney '56, who then turned around and through his Atlantic Philanthropies gave ~ $1B back to Cornell, of which $350M was the seed money for Cornell Tech. He also gave away $7B to non-Cornell good works. (So is Cornell happy to see $1B, or pissed at getting shafted on the other $7B?)

Sort of like thread drift: I like also that Feeney worked it out so Atlantic Philanthropies gave all the money during his lifetime and there's no chance of mission drift, where the donor's wishes wind up being twisted by future charity trustees. Princeton got hammered in a lawsuit a decade ago where money donated by the A&P heirs (about 6% of Princeton's total endowment) that was intended to prepare Woodrow Wilson School students for government service. The Wall Street Journal edit page people were all over this one because to them it was another example of a grant being twisted toward more liberal / progressive uses once the university got its hands on the cash. Princeton maintains it did no wrong but still it gave back $100M. WSJ story (not editorial): https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB122892333131594827

[marty]

I'm glad we never have thread drift anymore.

Sort of like thread drift: I like also that Feeney worked it out so Atlantic Philanthropies gave all the money during his lifetime and there's no chance of mission drift,

RPI had their version of this too.  Except that their big donor decided to give the money to St. Elsewhere.::yark::

(I really admired Dr. Medicus for giving the over 10 million outright rather than setting up a foundation with its requisite banker-attorney-trustee yearly vig.)

[mike1960]

First day practice at Bartels. (I think that's Bartels.)

https://www.instagram.com/p/B8C02NMJyKg/