This letter is in reply to Timothy McLaughlin's letter to the editor in Tuesday's Collegian. Mr. McLaughlin's suggestion to avoid a tuition increase was to cut down on research funding by Penn State.

While I agree that the problem of tuition costs is an important one, Mr. McLaughlin is incorrect in his assumptions. I am not quite sure where he got the idea that Penn State provides the money for the majority of the research at this university, but that statement is far from the truth.

I am currently a postdoctoral student in the biology department and I did my graduate research in the biochemistry and molecular biology department. While I do not profess to know all of the intricate details of the research funding that go on at this university, I believe that I have gained some insight into this process since I arrived here in 1994.

Contrary to the beliefs of Mr. McLaughlin, Penn State does not just hand out tuition money to pay for research. Rather, at least within the Eberly College of Science, the majority of research is funded by outside agencies, including The National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation and the American Cancer Society, and also numerous other organizations and private foundations.

Research faculty, or principal investigators, at this university put in an enormous amount of effort to put forth quality grant proposals and compete with hundreds, if not thousands, of other applicants in order to obtain grant money.

This monetary award covers such costs as salaries, research supplies and equipment. When an investigator is awarded a grant, the agency also provides a separate amount of money, overhead, which goes directly to Penn State. This overhead represents a percentage of the total grant award, but is considered a separate fund. In some cases, the overhead costs can be in the range of 40 percent.

For example, if an investigator gets a grant for $100,000, Penn State receives an additional $40,000. This money is used to cover costs such as staff assistance, heating and electricity. In some ways, one can think of it as rent. These research faculty help bring money to Penn State and pay Penn State to do research on the premises, so to speak.

Admittedly, Penn State returns a small portion of the overhead back to the investigator as discretionary funds, which can be used for office supplies and postage which are not allowed to be charged to some grants.

The fact, however, is that tuition money and alumni donations are not sponsoring the majority of research at Penn State.