Universities sue over National Science Foundation funding cuts

A coalition of universities and corresponding organizations sued the National Science Foundation (NSF) on Monday over slated funding cuts to schools. 

The federal agency said Friday it would no longer reimburse indirect costs for research exceeding 15 percent.

“For decades, universities have built their research institutions on the government’s settled approach to funding the actual costs of the research it sponsors. Some of those costs are ‘direct;’ that is, they are readily attributable to specific projects,” plaintiffs wrote, according to court documents. 

“Others are ‘indirect;’ that is, they are necessary for the research to occur but harder to attribute to individual projects,” they added.

The group of 13 schools, which includes the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University of Chicago, Brown University, University of Pennsylvania and others, alleges the “one size fits all regime” has already been struck down by Congress. 

In the lawsuit, plaintiffs said Congress prevented the first Trump administration from cutting the indirect cost rate to 10 percent for all National Institutes of Health grants, arguing implementation of the proposal would be “throwing research programs across the country into disarray.” 

Institutions said the same effect would happen due to NSF reimbursement reductions.

“This policy allows NSF and its awardees to focus more on scientific progress and less on administrative overhead by aligning with common federal benchmarks,” the agency said in its Friday statement. 

“Applying a standard indirect cost rate also improves government efficiency by eliminating the need for individualized indirect cost negotiations.”

The NSF declined to comment on the lawsuit. 

The agency has undergone widespread change after cutting 10 percent of its staff in February. NSF Director Sethuraman Panchanathan announced his resignation at the end of April.

“This is a pivotal moment for our nation in terms of global competitiveness. NSF is an extremely important investment to make U.S. scientific dominance a reality,” he said in a statement on his departure. 

“We must not lose our competitive edge.”