system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
Anyone experience title discrimination in grant reviews?

Last fall, I applied for a large grant from a federal agency as lead-PI, leading a large team. We were just informed today that while our proposal had very good reviews and ratings, it was not selected for funding. Fine, this happens all the time, but in the rationale for not funding, one of the points given stated:

"3. The panel expressed concern that the leading PI of the proposed project is not in a more permanent position with their institution. Given that this is a 5-year project with a significant budget, the panel felt that there would be significant risk in awarding such a large, long-duration proposal to be led by an investigator who may have to leave their institution before it is completed."

That sounds absolutely ridiculous to me, because it basically says only tenured faculty can be awarded large grants. I have no intention of leaving my institution, I still have relatively stable funding for the next 3 years with my current projects (which the grant panel knows, because we have to submit current and past funding disclosure), so it's not like I'm in danger of just suddenly dropping out. I've also had a strong record of bringing in funding which is also disclosed in the current/past funding disclosure.

Plus, faculty of all stripes change institutions or leave in the middle of projects for all kinds of different reasons: tenured faculty can go to a different institution, tenure-track faculty can not make tenure, etc. I don't see what the fact that I'm not TT or tenured has to do with whether I can lead this grant or not, especially when my funding record is strong and my current funding is stable.

Finally, in addition to me, the project has 6 co-PIs, 3 of which are at my institution and could take over if I left for some reason.

I've applied for many grants over the years, had a lot rejected and had a lot awarded, and this is the first time I've ever experienced this (explicitly anyway). Have any of you experienced anything of this sort?
gpt
I've never seen it explicitly stated like this in the review, but title discrimination is commonplace in practice. It's commonplace enough that our medical school got tired of it and re-titled its academic staff as "research *professors*" so they wouldn't get dinged for not being called a professor. It's ridiculous.