These grants were not made for the purpose of subtitling videos.
When my advisor gets a half a million dollars to do research on quantum computers, do you think he gets to use half a million dollars for it?
If you do, you clearly have not been exposed to how grants are processed at universities.
The university takes a cut - I've often heard numbers in the ballpark of 50% - to fund infrastructure. See:
https://www.quora.com/What-percentages-of-research-grant-mon...
This is not a scheme - this is how universities have always dealt with grants.
It's entirely up to the university to decide where to spend this money.
So from the Federal government's perspective, they are funding them for it, and instead the university is choosing not to spend money on this.
These grants were not made for the purpose of subtitling videos.