MIT overcharged gov't $731,000

By ROXANNE PATEL The Massachusetts Institute of Technology announced yesterday that it overcharged the federal government by approximately $731,000 during the past five years, using indirect government research funds to pay for, among other things, a trip to Barbados and flowers for the president's house. MIT is the third school -- following Stanford University and Harvard Medical School -- to reveal misappropriations of federal research money since the government began its continuing review of universities' research spending methods. The investigation includes the University, which is preparing to face a governmental audit within a few months. MIT officials revealed yesterday after an internal audit that they also used taxpayers' money to pay for catering and alcohol for several dinner meetings and receptions, the printing of official programs and other non-research purposes. MIT has already repaid the government $27,317 in taxpayer money it used to pay a lobbyist in Congress. These abuses at MIT mirror similar unauthorized expenditures at Stanford, where federal officials uncovered that university administrators overcharged the government by $200 million during the last decade. Stanford used government money to refurbish the university's yacht and build the school's shopping center. Indirect research costs are the maintenance and administrative expenses related to federally funded research that universities charge to the government. MIT's indirect cost rate is 62 percent, which means that for every $100 the government grants to a university researcher, the administration receives an additional $62. The University's indirect research rate is 65 percent, the 14th highest rate in the country. The federal review has revealed misappropriations in three schools now, substantiating fears that abuses similiar to Stanford's are widespread. University officials, however, have denied throughout the investigation that the University charged the government for non-research related expenses. But President Sheldon Hackney told University Council members this month there may be some questionable expenditures of federal money. "There may be some transactions that look a little funny," Hackney said. "I'm not sure there are not things in the transactions that we wouldn't want to see on the front page of the Philadelphia Inquirer." The University has not yet received official notification of the impending federal probe.

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