"I got an office but I decided I'd rather be in a coffee shop" doesn't mean you should get a refund...

I love it when people misrepresent things to people who don't know better. This happens every time research funding gets mentioned on HN, by people looking to rile up HNers who absolutely love hearing that their prejudices against the government and scientists are true and academia is robbing the dear taxpayer blind, like it's all some big shady scam.

Direct costs are things that are directly and solely related to or used for the grant. Labor. Equipment. Supplies. For the research funded by the grant, within reason (nobody accounts for or cares about, say, a lab mate asking to use some of a chemical, or one of your DVD-R disks. If you have plenty of room in that incubator that was paid for with your grant and a labmate or someone in the department could really use a corner of it to try something on their experiment, or their incubator dies and you've got room? You say yes. Captain NIH does not descend and go HALT SCIENTIST! THAT EQUIPMENT WAS PAID FOR OUT OF DIRECT COSTS FOR YOUR GRANT, NOT THEIRS!"

Indirect costs are all the costs necessary for "keeping the lights on." Indirect costs are like taxes because everyone's grants are "taxed" and that pays for all the things everyone uses. Maintaining the buildings, paying the electric bill, paying the salaries of the IT staff, paying for network equipment, servers, storage, UPSs. Indirect grant costs pay for the trash (and hazardous waste) to get collected, for the parking lot to get plowed in the winter, for the buildings to be cooled in the summer and heated in the winter. In a lab it pays for stuff like centralized purified water, central gas supplies, and so on.

You don't get to cry about how your work doesn't need all that lab stuff those bio researchers need, or that big storage cluster so you couldn't have to pay for it. Just like you don't get to cry about how the road you live off of is very short so your taxes should be lower because the town has to pay less to pave and plow it, and since you don't have any kids your taxes should be lower still because you're not using the schools. And really, your house didn't catch on fire (and you're very careful about fire safety) so why do you have to pay for the fire department? etc.

Indirect costs are negotiated between schools and the organizations that award grants. A school doesn't get to make up whatever they want. It's known by everyone involved, well ahead of time. Nobody walked into Toomim's office and said "ooo, nice shiny $650k grant you got there, Michael Toomim. We're gonna just...take...about half of that. YOINK! SUCKER! Where does everyone want to go next weekend? Bermuda, or Italy? WHY NOT BOTH!"

Further, indirect costs are accounted for when grants are awarded. The awarding organization didn't think his grant proposal was worth $650k and then oooo, the Big Mean School Administration came and took half his stuff and poor Michael Toomim was left with half the money he thought he needed...frowny face :(

The organization thought the work proposed in the grant application would require $300k in direct costs. They looked up what his school uses for indirect costs, and "wrote the check" for $650k. Other grant organizations award an amount and then an additional amount is added equal to whatever the school charges for indirect costs.

Everyone knows this, grad students included. Nobody counts indirect costs as part of their grant. Ever. When they say "I got a million dollar grant!" they mean "a million dollars plus indirect costs charged by the organization."

Third, there is no fucking way whatsoever that the school took any additional money from the grant for anything except direct costs - stuff that was used solely and exclusively for that grant. Nothing in the grant was yoinked "by the lab" or "by the department." That's called "double dipping." Every org that gives grants prohibits it, and if you're caught doing it, it is a big fucking deal.