A college or university that does research ends up spending considerable resources of its own even when most of its research is “funded”. How and why is this the case, and where does the institution look to find the resources needed to cover this unfunded research cost? Undergraduate tuition seems like one likely source.
These internal research expenditures fall into two categories, which I will call “open” and “hidden”. As these terms may suggest, the first is a set of costs that are reported nationally by the NSF and consequently appear in numerous reports put out by the institutions themselves. On the other hand, hidden costs are well known, but seldom openly discussed even thought they contribute very significantly to the institutional cost of research .
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