The underlying philosophy at the University of Iowa is to reimburse funding sources for indirect costs incurred. For example, general administration is funded 100% through the General Education Fund. So, as indirect costs are assessed to grants, the offsetting indirect cost recovery for general administration as well as sponsored programs and grant accounting functions are recorded as revenue to the General Education Fund to offset the costs of these functions. As another illustration, the University Hospital funds 4.78% of our total research related F&A costs.  Therefore, we attempt to return 4.78% of our recoveries to the University Hospital.

A percentage of all F&A cost recoveries are non-General Education Fund.  These recoveries are returned directly to the campus units which bear the costs or are distributed to improve research facilities for units which contribute to these administrative cost pools, the basis for the University's cost recovery.

A portion of the F&A recoveries attributable to non-General Education Fund indirect costs of research are pooled to support the research enterprise.  This category is called Research Infrastructure and is used for initiatives such as Department of Psychology improvements and expansion, College of Public Health facility debt service, Clinical Trials Statistics facilities in University Capitol Centre, capital and debt service costs of the Medical Education Research Facility, the Carver Biomedical Research Facility, and the Pappajohn Biomedical Discovery Building.  Each of these are done in cooperation with the deans of the respective colleges.  In the future the University is committed to support a substantial portion of the capital cost of an addition to Seashore Hall for Psychology and the College of Pharmacy addition where these recoveries will have a financial role.  Most of the expense within the Research Infrastructure category is in the form of debt service for new research and research support facilities cited.