I found myself wanting to say "I think this sort of grant proposal thing happens maybe 25% of the time, but not all the time, the way the post implies."

I also wished there was some kind of gradation for "school insider/outsider". I'm an outsider, but I talk a lot with a friend who teaches full time. I showed this article to her and she said "yes, yes, yes. This is basically how it is."

I actually DO still assign substantial probability to this being a hoax, despite it matching my understanding - we know the this is sockpuppet account, created ostensibly for NDA anonymity. But can think of some people here who might have created this explicitly as a test of rationality, who are sort of annoyed that the politics involved here get less scrutiny and want to demonstrate that.