Dp professors receive additional money for themselves in grants or are grants specifically for research use?

Answer 1

Virtually all grants must be specifically justified by an accounting of planned expenses. Professors can't pay themselves from a grant.

However, they can benefit indirectly from a grant. Besides the prestige, they can "buy out" part of their teaching load to free themselves up for research, paying an instructor to teach their classes. They can purchase equipment for the research that remains under their control after the study. They can finance travel to present findings.

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Answer 2

The answer to this depends on whether the professor has a regular academic appointment or one based on "soft money", often the case in medical schools and research institutes.

In both cases, the professor's salary and personal benefits are set by the institution, independent of the grant.

In the usual case where the professor has a regular academic appointment, the university is responsible for paying him during the academic year and requires a certain teaching burden. In the grant proposal, the professor can specify that he be paid for summer research ( not otherwise paid by his institution ) and this, depending on the institution, can be as much as three months or, more usually, two months ( on the ground that people benefit from taking a vacation from both teaching and research ). He can "buy off" some of his teaching load during the academic year but doesn't get remunerated differently because of this but can spend the fractional time doing research instead of teaching.

In both cases, there are travel expenses, assistants, etc. that can be paid.

In the case of "soft money" appointments, a professor has a specified rate of pay, usually no teaching responsibility but doesn't get paid unless there is a research grant from which to pay the salary. This salary includes both the academic year salary and any summer salary ( since there is usually no teaching required of these positions, the difference between the academic year and summer months is purely numerical ).

Answer 3

Professors can include in the grant package an amount for themselves. Call it a salary, stipend, or whatever have you. Most grant packages are structured so that everything must be outlined, i.e. research staff, materials, predicted expenditures and time required. They are normally very well documented. But the short question is yes, yes they can use them for themselves if the grant specifies. They never give money away in a grant package without knowing where it goes.

Answer 4

Typically grants buy the professor's time, pay for research assistantships, and pay for equipment. For example, rather than teaching 4 classes the professor gets a research grant so that they only have to teach 2 classes and spend the rest of their time working on research. I think in this case some of the money goes to the professor as a stipend and some of it goes back to the university in order to support a replacement professor to cover the classes the professor should have taught.

Answer 5

As Taylor J has stated, the professors must outline where the money is going to go when the grant budget is outlined. They can reserve a set amount as a stipend for themselves. Most of the money will go towards overhead (to the University), graduate and professional researchers, materials, equipment, time (for using other facilities etc), travel, publication fees, conference fees etc.

Answer 6

Part of the grant money can be used for salaries for the people who are working on the grant. My sister has many grants she runs, and she pays her people out of the grant money. Because she is the administrator of the grants, she does not pay herself.

Answer 7

In general grants are given to professors to use at their discretion for research purposes.

Answer 8

No, it's not for themselves. When a grant is written, you have to put in what it's for and exactly where you expect all of the funds to go toward. You don't get 'extra bonus money for me because I'm awesome and think I need it.' They would not be approving that portion of the grant.

Answer 9

All the answerers have given adequate,comprehensive information .Thee is litle to add.

Answer 10

ah...
sometimes they can get paid for their time to do research...
...research is a lot of labor and people get paid for doing it....
so it's not always totally separate...