Inside Higher Ed has a short article on how the additions to the NIH and NSF budgets in the stimulus pose a challenge for program administrators:

One need only look back to the aftermath of the doubling of the NIH budget, Cicerone said, when we “got into a pickle now where they’re oversubscribed [in terms of demand for grants] now that we’re back to level funding.” The agency arguably financed too many projects that required longterm funds to sustain, and many universities built up their research programs in ways that put them in a bind when the flow of funds slowed.

Also worth looking at is a book review of How Professors Think: Inside the Curious World of Academic Judgment by Michèle Lamont.