Comment by koolba
> Organizations typically add 3-5x additional to either "pad" their request (in the event it doesn't get 'fully funded') and/or this is an opportunity for the university to higher for a bunch of roles they wouldn't have been able to get funded in the first place - so lots of things get buried in these numbers.
A factor of 3-5x seems insanely overboard. Thats arguably fraudulent. Ditto for claiming the money is for one thing and then using it for something entirely different.
I get that it’s a communist era style scraping to get by / work around a broken budgetary system life in academia, but that’s misappropriation of tax and tuition dollars.
You ask for 5x the need, get 2x the original amount, and then when the project costs 1.9x as much as expected you're still slightly under budget!