“non-teaching staff” includes all the research scientists, postdoc, and techs that help make the research happen. These universities are not especially good at teaching compared to SLACs. They are exceptionally good at research.

That’s not what most of these people are doing.

https://www.mindingthecampus.org/2023/01/05/more-employees-t...

Those people are paid for out of research grants, not tuition.