It is pretty common for universities to impose a 50-59.9% indirect cost (that they take in addition to the requested funding by the researchers). I've had grants where the university refused to offer a few thousands dollars of free equipment use as support in the grant (which is something required for funding) on a multi million grant. That's because universities are badly managed, they bleed money with tuition to compete with other universities, pay indecent salaries to administratives (and sometimes researchers) many universities pay millions to their basketball coach. And then you have to pay for all those renovations that are requires to get a good ranking in the annual US news or whatever other performance metric. And you are right for grad students ponzi scheme saw that firsthand.