Universities across the US are announcing scale-backs and freezes on graduate admissions and new hires as uncertainty around federal funding continues. A month into office, the Trump administration has introduced several orders aimed at dismantling federal funding, including a freeze on federal grant reviews, the removal of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI)-related programs, and a proposed 15 percent cap on National Institutes of Health (NIH) indirect funding.
“Even existing grants aren’t being funded,” said Kimberly Cooper, a developmental geneticist at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD). Despite a federal judge’s ruling to lift the freeze on these funds, the Trump administration has found a “back-door” approach to block funding by preventing the NIH from posting new notices in the Federal Register, a required step for any grant review. However, months after submitting the required reports, Cooper said she is still awaiting the third-year funding allocation of one of her grants.
These funds are necessary for financially supporting research staff, including graduate students and postdoctoral researchers. “I’ve got six staff members that are dependent on me to pay them, and I am dependent on money that I am told is there to be able to project how long I can keep them.”
Few universities have released public statements detailing their response to the proposed funding cuts, leaving many prospective students and early-career researchers frustrated and confused.
For the past 60 to 70 years, the US has heavily invested in scientific research, establishing itself as a global leader. Cooper described graduate students and postdocs as the engine of this fruitful enterprise. “Without graduate students and postdocs, there would be no research, nobody at the bench, no hands doing the work,” she added.
Echoing this, Rachel Arey, a neuroscientist at Baylor College of Medicine, said, “My lab has been basically powered by graduate students and trainees from various training programs.” She added that it wasn’t until last fall that she hired her first postdoctoral researcher. “All of the research and all of the progress in my lab has made over the last five years could not be possible without graduate students,” said Arey.
Higher Education on Hold Amid Funding Cuts
In the US research environment, funding for graduate students can come from a few different sources, including grants awarded to faculty, training and career development awards, and national fellowships. Many programs provide support for the student’s first year in the program, often while they are completing lab rotations or fulfilling teaching requirements, but graduate students will likely transition to another source of funding once they have joined a lab, and this source of funding can change over the course of their training. In many cases, they are funded through a grant awarded to a faculty member.
“If you go back into deep history, graduate education was a gentleman's opportunity,” said Cooper. Individuals who came from wealth could financially support themselves through education and training. However, over the last several decades, graduate education has transformed into the likes of a paid apprenticeship. “That's what allows us to actually tap into the best minds who don't necessarily have the financial support to be able to work without also having a job,” said Cooper, who said that federal funding has been instrumental throughout her own training.
Some universities also dip into their endowments to fund education and training programs. For example, on February 26th, Stanford University announced a freeze on staff hiring, citing the “uncertainty about the level of direct federal funding for scientific research as agencies like NIH and NSF face cuts.” The university also mentioned a Congressional proposal introduced last month to increase the tax on university endowments. With respect to their own endowment, the university said, “In particular, the endowment supports roughly two-thirds of the budget for undergraduate and graduate financial aid, as well as a significant portion of faculty salaries, research, and key programs like libraries and student services.”
Although many of the new administration's actions are tied up in court, awaiting final outcomes, trainees and early-career researchers are already feeling the strain caused by the resulting chaos and confusion.
The timing has been especially disruptive, as it coincides with interview season for incoming graduate students. The January 22 freeze on federal funding and announcement that restrictions would be placed on the NIH, which occurred before the policy proposal to cap NIH indirect funds, had already set the wheels in motion, according to Cooper. “We already decided that we could not continue with business as usual, because we weren't sure that the funding rate that UCSD has had success with would continue for individual faculty grants to run labs that pay our graduate student researchers,” said Cooper, who is also the associate director of UCSD’s Biological Science program.
Alongside potential cuts to faculty grants, Cooper noted concern over the renewal of an institutional training grant that the National Institute for General Medical Sciences (NIGMS) has awarded to UCSD continually for the last 35 years. This grant helps fund 30 first- and second-year PhD students. “Its renewal at this point is uncertain, and it expires this summer,” she noted.
In a typical year, the program’s target enrollment is 25 new graduate students, but without a guarantee that sufficient funding will be available, the UCSD Biological Science program decided to cut eight positions—a more than 30 percent reduction in admissions. If things don’t improve, Cooper said, “I can anticipate that we will be making bigger cuts next year.”
While Arey is unaware of any plans to reduce or pause graduate admissions at Baylor College of Medicine, she noted that there is some uncertainty about the status of the university’s Initiative for Maximizing Student Development (IMSD) program, which provides support for graduate students from groups that have been historically excluded from science and medicine. According to the university website, since 1998, an IMSD grant awarded to the school has contributed to the training of at least 235 PhD or MD/PhD students. With the new administration’s dismantling of government DEI programs, it is unclear what will happen to grants like IMSD that have helped to support early-career researchers for more than two decades.
“Since we feel that the future of [the IMSD grant] could be at risk, we're not sure how that's going to affect admissions, but we're proceeding as usual, and we're really grateful to the school for doing that for us for now,” said Arey.
Graduate students aren’t the only ones facing cutbacks—it’s also the middle of faculty recruitment season. “The cohort that is really badly affected right now are current postdocs, senior postdocs, that are looking for faculty positions,” said Cooper. “We've also frozen hiring.”
Cooper noted that a senior postdoctoral researcher who she mentors is preparing for the possibility of applying for overseas fellowships. However, she worries that would-be graduate students, who have not yet committed to academic research, may instead opt for opportunities outside of higher education. “It's not a brain drain to other countries as much as it is a wholesale loss of that scientific potential that has existed in this country for so long, since the 1950s,” said Cooper. “How long is it going to take to rebuild once it's been dismantled?”
The Biomedical Industry Pipeline Will Run Dry with Federal Funding Switched Off
While the shockwaves of the new administration policy proposals to scale back federal funding will be felt immediately within academia, researchers warn that it’s only a matter of time before they extend to the broader economy. Private enterprises, including pharmaceutical and biotech industries, benefit not only from federally-funded basic research conducted at universities but also from the skills and expertise that PhDs bring to their companies. “If graduate education is no longer funded by the federal government, the biomedical industry pipeline is dry,” said Cooper.
Beyond a deep understanding of everything from cancer immunology to bioinformatics and neurodegenerative diseases, PhDs develop several transferable skills, including project management, critical thinking, communication, and adaptability.
“One of the most important things that we do is not just help make the discoveries of today, but by training the future scientific workforce, we're helping ensure that there can be discoveries tomorrow,” said Arey. “It's really a privilege to get to do that so seeing that put at risk is quite distressing for many of us.”
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the individuals interviewed and do not reflect those of their employers.
