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Big Science, Big Government

AAAS never saw a big-government science program it didn’t like

My lobby, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) isn’t located in Washington, D.C., because its employees are fond of the city’s heat and humidity in the summer. No, it is here to be close to Congress and the president, to have access to largely sympathetic media, and, by using its influence, bring home the bucks for its members.

Programmatic science funding goes to universities in the form of grants and contracts funding research proposals generated by the faculty. Academia has become profoundly dependent upon the “overhead” generated by such money.

For example, University of Virginia, typical of the “Public Ivy’s”, charges a fringe rate on salaries of 31% (that’s for health and life insurance, disability, institutional contributions to retirement, etc…) over a faculty member’s base salary. Then they tack on an additional 52% to that total, the overhead. So a beginning Full Professor, who probably makes around $100,000, actually requires a taxpayer outlay of over $199,000 if the feds are to pay him. Such full-time “research faculty”, paid on outside funds, are common now (I was one at UVA for 30 years).

Federal domination of science funding has two quite intended consequences: both individual scientists and major universities have become wards of Washington. For decades, academic sociologists have noted that almost all faculty party affiliations are with the Democrats. This is no conspiracy–it is merely like-minded individuals hiring other like minds and voting their best interest. Political economists would shrug at this example of “Public Choice” at work.

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