When a grant is awarded, a portion of the money is set aside to cover the shared costs of doing research, such as lab space, utilities, compliance, and the staff who keep everything running. It is often called “overhead,” and many people assume a 42% rate means 42% of the award disappears into it. It does not. In this post, we use a simple $100,000 grant to show what actually happens to the money, why two awards of the same size can bring in very different amounts, and where the recovered dollars end up across the university. If you have ever wondered how grant funding really works, this is a good place to start.

HERD Is More Than a Number: What aspiring R2 universities need to understand before they build a growth strategy

For universities working toward Carnegie R2 status, the HERD Survey often gets reduced to a single question: are we above or below $5 million? In reality, HERD measures whether an institution can identify, classify, document, and explain the research it actually performs. This piece unpacks common misconceptions, like assuming all grant awards count, and outlines the questions institutional leaders should be asking before setting an R2 growth target.