Harvard Admits Overbilling Government : Education: It is withdrawing $500,000 in claims. Inquiry that began with Stanford spreads to other elite universities.

Harvard Medical School said Tuesday that it is withdrawing about $500,000 in costs mistakenly billed to the federal government as research-related expenses.

Harvard acted in response to a widening congressional investigation of billing practices for federally funded research at the nation’s elite universities. The inquiry started at Stanford University in Palo Alto, Calif.

At least six other universities are either under scrutiny or scheduled to be examined by congressional investigators: USC, UC Berkeley, Caltech, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Pennsylvania and Johns Hopkins University.

Meanwhile, in a separate inquiry, the inspector general’s office at the Department of Health and Human Services said that it intends to expand its audits of university research expenses to 13 schools from a previous list of four.

The nine additional schools are USC, Duke, Emory, Rutgers, the University of Chicago, the University of Michigan, the University of Texas Southwest Medical Center, Washington University in St. Louis and the University of Pittsburgh. The agency said last week that audits had begun at Yale, the University of Pennsylvania, Johns Hopkins and Dartmouth.

The $500,000 in billings being withdrawn by Harvard is part of $28 million in federally funded research for which the medical school has sought reimbursement for fiscal 1991. The school said that $140,000 of the withdrawn costs are associated with the dean’s office and included expenses for travel and meals. In addition, requests for payment are being withdrawn for a $3,100 retirement reception for a senior dean, a $7,500 contribution to the Boston public schools and $60,000 in accounting errors.

Although acknowledging that its action was taken in response to the federal inquiry, a Harvard spokesman said that the $500,000 figure was calculated from an audit conducted for the school by an outside accounting firm. David Bray, the school’s executive vice president, said that Harvard is cooperating with the congressional investigation.

Rep. John D. Dingell (D-Mich.), whose investigators initiated the spreading probe, praised Harvard’s response and contrasted it with what he and others have characterized as stonewalling by Stanford.

Since investigators first raised the issue of abuses in research costs at Stanford late last year, the university has withdrawn about $690,000 in charges for such embarrassing items as depreciation on a yacht, refurbishing a piano and flowers at a 1987 reception for University President Donald Kennedy and his new wife.

A federal auditor testified at a congressional hearing last month that Stanford may have overcharged the government more than $160 million in research overhead costs in the last decade. These are indirect costs, such as utilities and administrative services.

The university has maintained that it has done nothing wrong and that the allegations are overstated and unfair. Kennedy testified at last month’s hearing that some of the controversial claims were mistakes and that others, although allowable, created a bad appearance.

Caltech, one of the eight schools under review by investigators from the General Accounting Office and Dingell’s House Energy and Commerce oversight subcommittee, recently withdrew more than $500,000 in billings that had been claimed as research overhead costs from 1987 to 1990. The items included $80,000 for a retreat by school trustees and entertainment expenses.