I've heard that some grant money is earmarked to be spent in stupid ways. "Here's $2M for technology" means they can put a Threadripper on every desk, but not replace the desk, or the 30-year-old textbooks within it.

I'm surprised there aren't an ecosystem of crooked vendors that know ways to help cashout such grants. Buy these garbage PCs for $1000 each, and we have a "surplus trade in programme" to buy them back for $600 cash each in 3 months, giving you no-longer-restricted cash to actually fix the hole in the cafeteria floor that's already swallowed Mrs Baxter's third grade class"