The significant impact of the Executive Branch’s cuts to research funding at universities across the country.

President Trump’s second term has been marked with fast and furious federal funding cuts across the board, affecting all walks of life in the U.S. Research funding in particular has been hit hard, and the academic community has been sent reeling in response. 

Citing February’s “Dear Colleague” letter, on March 14 the Department of Education began an investigation into 45 universities, including public, private, and Ivy League schools, for participation in the PhD Project, a nonprofit organization that works with schools and companies to help individuals from marginalized communities attain PhDs and professor positions. Universities like Arizona State University, Ohio State University, Yale University, and even the University of Oregon are on the department’s list of schools that have potentially breached recent federal race-related policy. Should the investigation find faults, universities are liable to lose federal funding from the Department of Education. 

In January, after Gov. Abbott threatened the university’s president’s position, Texas A&M University was pressured to leave the PhD Project. Now, in reaction to the investigation, more universities have chosen to end collaboration with the PhD Project, including the University of Kentucky, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and Arizona State University.

The move is part of a campaign the government has made against academic institutions. Many universities have become afraid to resist recent pressure, under risk of losing funding and becoming an example. The federal government has already threatened to cut off funding to Columbia and Princeton, prestigious Ivy League colleges, setting up an example of resistance to federal policy.

The Department of Education is not alone in executing cuts. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has been a world-renowned research agency, serving as the premier public funder for the world’s leaders in biomedical research. However, the agency, boasting a budget of $47.4 billion, has become a centerpiece for the Trump administration’s funding cuts, including vital funds to research universities. With grant cuts centered around vaccines, Alzheimer’s, cancer, and infectious disease research, many researchers are rising in protest.

On Feb. 7 NIH announced a change in certain funding rates to universities, capping indirect costs to 15 percent under grounds of reducing funding waste. In addition to amounts already allotted in grants, NIH provides extra funding to cover “indirect costs,” including facility upkeep and administrative cost. Universities have long negotiated rates with NIH to fit their needs, with an average of 27-28 percent rate to cover expenses.

NIH cutting rates could significantly affect university research programs. For example, Johns Hopkins University, renowned as a leading medical researcher, could lose up to $136 million in funding. Other prominent research universities, like the University of Pennsylvania, could lose similar amounts of far more than $100 million. The rate cut would also force certain grant-funded projects and programs to cease in the middle of progress.

Through five separate lawsuits researchers, attorneys general, and organizations sued NIH, and on April 14 a U.S. district judge formally barred NIH from instituting the cap. The judge argued that the cap ultimately “violates the Administrative Procedure Act because it exceeds statutory authority and is arbitrary and capricious.” 

NIH has also seen pushback on grant cuts. On the basis of redirecting research away from DEI, NIH has terminated more than 2.4 billion dollars in grants, leaving research looking into COVID 19, vaccines, health equity, Alzheimer’s, women’s health, LGBTQ+ health, international health, and climate change, as well as DEI, stranded without funds. Subsequent lawsuits accused NIH of not only violating the Administrative Procedure Act but of also directing research on the basis of politics.

Research funding has always been a subject of contention, but recently the discussion has become aggravated, leading to potentially brash decisions that will have consequences in research as a field. Ultimately, research as a practice is active science intended for the betterment of society, and it is our nation’s scientists that lead the charge in innovation in our country.

“I think being critical and reevaluating this process is really important,” Asher Tubman, South Eugene Physics teacher and a scientist, said about research funding. “I don’t think it’s inaccurate to point out inefficiencies [in the grant process]. It’s a complicated field.”

According to his colleagues, if the system were to be rebuilt from the ground up, a significant amount of waste could be reduced – up to 30 percent of funds. But Tubman noted that it “doesn’t justify not doing science, and it doesn’t justify doing it worse because we’re doing it inefficiently now.”

Tubman more specifically stressed a serious contemplation of the reasoning behind the cuts. 

“What is the goal?” he asked. “Wasting some money but doing all the science we want, in a good way, and getting good outcomes? Would we lose that if we didn’t waste any money? Is it fair to call that money wasted in that case?”

Article by Martín Peredia-Mayorga