Last week’s blog and its figures emphasized three main issues related to university research:
- The US trails other countries in government funding for university research (The US ranks 28th; the top 10 are all developed countries with GDPs much smaller than ours).
- In terms of government subsidies for research, two agencies stand out: the NIH in terms of the resources it offers and the NSF in terms of its support for basic research. Recent changes in the government have impacted these agencies and are affecting basic research.
- Support for research by the federal government is declining and there is increasing support for research from private businesses. The new government is bound to have major impacts on accelerating these trends.
The distinction between government support and business support needs some clarification. The figure in last week’s blog that shows this trend is titled “Funding sources for research and development in the US.” It is obvious that development plays a much more important role in business support than it does in government support. Another difference between government and business support is that government-supported research is more likely to be published on a platform that is open to anybody interested, whereas the results of business-supported research are more likely to be published either as patents or internal reports to safeguard from competitive eyes. In these two supporting modes, government-sponsored research is aimed at advancing public knowledge, while business-supported research is often targeted at enhancing corporate knowledge.
One important question often raised is why governments (and taxpayers) should pay for research. Trysh Travis from Time gives an opinion:
The new NIH guidance justified reducing the IDC [indirect costs] it would pay as a commonsense market reform: since private foundations pay a lower percentage of universities’ IDC, the federal rate must be padded. Meanwhile, Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s manifesto for a second Trump administration, argued that IDC actually paid for “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) efforts” on university campuses.
But both claims ignore the real reasons the federal government embraced this complex method of funding scientific research during the Cold War and oblivious to how it has evolved. Paying for IDC was a way to build and maintain a free and uniquely American way of doing science—and it has proved deeply successful for three-quarters of a century.
Three weeks ago (February 11th), my blog was focused on the administration’s anti-DEI campaign in universities. Now the anti-DEI measures are extending to research, almost guaranteeing that social study or interdisciplinary research, such as that focused on climate change, will be seriously discouraged:
Federally funded scientific research has become the latest target of the diversity antagonists now in control of Congress and the White House.
Earlier this month, Republican senator Ted Cruz of Texas released a database of “questionable” university research projects—funded by the National Science Foundation to the tune of $2.04 billion—that he accused of pushing “a far-left ideology” by promoting diversity, equity and inclusion and advancing “neo-Marxist class warfare propaganda,” according to a news release from his office.
Cruz, who chairs the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, called for “significant scrutiny” of the 3,400-plus projects listed in the database, which contain terminology he said are related to concepts of status, social justice, gender, race and environmental justice.
The cuts in research overhead that I discussed in last week’s blog are now forcing colleges to cut graduate programs; this will have a direct impact on the availability of professional manpower for related fields in the near future:
Several colleges and universities are pausing admissions to some graduate programs, reducing class sizes or rescinding offers to students in an effort to cut costs amid uncertainty in federal funding.
The disruption to graduate school admissions is the latest cost-cutting move for colleges. After the National Institutes of Health proposed cutting reimbursements for costs related to research, several colleges and universities said they would pause hiring and cut spending, Inside Higher Ed previously reported. (A federal judge has blocked the NIH plan from taking effect for now.)
These dynamics are bound to have a direct impact on US higher education’s global ranking:
This month, Global Citizen Solutions released its first-ever Global Education Report naming the top destinations for higher education. The 10 countries were ranked based on factors like university prestige, quality of life, visa options, and post-graduation opportunities.
The Global Citizen Solutions report shows that international higher education is growing, Laura Madrid, research lead in the Global Intelligence Unit at GCS, tells CNBC Make It. According to their findings, there should be 10 million students studying abroad by 2030.
“You have more instability and instability in general leads to the movement of families,” she says. “People look for places where they feel safer, and they can experience different contexts.”
The report evaluated over 72 countries, using five key sub-indexes:
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Higher education systems
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Quality of life
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Higher education costs
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Career prospects
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Innovation and business friendliness
Some examples of these increases in the vulnerabilities of US higher education and the field of science are described in a recent Nature article:
After a month of repeated threats to US science funding, many early-career researchers such as Autrey are fearing for their careers. These scientists are especially vulnerable: graduate students, postdocs and scientists who are just starting their own laboratories are the researchers most likely to be living pay cheque to pay cheque, most reliant on federal grants for their income and least likely to have job security. Some are considering changing jobs, leaving the country or abandoning research altogether.
“Disruption and uncertainty are the enemy of science,” says Donna Ginther, an economist at the University of Kansas in Lawrence. And when disruption and uncertainty strike, she adds, “the people who lose their jobs are students and postdocs”.
If that happens now, science in the United States could undergo its own generational shift, she says: “Early-career scientists are the future.”
Details of some of these issues in NIH, the largest grant-generating agency, are described in the two articles below:
NYT: Trump Cuts Target Next Generation of Scientists and Public Health Leaders
The notices came all weekend, landing in the inboxes of federal scientists, doctors and public health professionals: Your work is no longer needed.
At the National Institutes of Health, the nation’s premier biomedical research agency, an estimated 1,200 employees — including promising young investigators slated for larger roles — have been dismissed.
At the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, two prestigious training programs were gutted: one that embeds recent public health graduates in local health departments and another to cultivate the next generation of Ph.D. laboratory scientists. But the agency’s Epidemic Intelligence Service — the “disease detectives” who track outbreaks around the world — has apparently been spared, perhaps because of an uproar among alumni after a majority of its members were told on Friday that they would be let go.
President Trump’s plan to shrink the size of the federal work force dealt blows to thousands of civil servants in the past few days. But the cuts to the Department of Health and Human Services — coming on the heels of the coronavirus pandemic, the worst public health crisis in a century — have been especially jarring. Experts say the firings threaten to leave the country exposed to further shortages of health workers, putting Americans at risk if another crisis erupts.
The Chronicle of Higher Education: Trump Wants to Cut Billions in Research Spending. Here’s How Much It Might Cost Your University.
A memo released late on Friday announced that the National Institutes of Health would limit indirect-cost funding to 15 percent, approximately half of the average rate it previously offered.
Twenty-two states sued the NIH over its new overhead-funding cap and requested a federal judge issue an injunction against the new policy, saying that “work to cure and treat human disease will grind to a halt” because of the move, which was set to take effect on Monday. A judge in the U.S. District Court of Massachusetts on Monday night temporarily blocked implementation of the policy in those 22 states.
As mentioned before, the NSF is one of the main agencies providing grants for basic research. Such research is the foundation of any long-term research; it is also, by its nature, a lot riskier than more applied research. Such research is judged more by the questions posed in its proposals than the answers expected in the publication results. However, even for such research, instructions for merit review are summarized in the following way:
Reviewers evaluate the proposal using the two National Science Board-approved merit review criteria: intellectual merit and broader impacts. These criteria cover both the quality of the research and the project’s potential impact on society. Program solicitations may also contain additional review criteria.
The potential impact on society is one of two criteria (in addition to extending the known science) that determine support for proposals.
The two articles below summarize what is now happening at the NSF:
NPR: National Science Foundation fires roughly 10% of its workforce
The National Science Foundation fired 168 employees on Tuesday. According to an NSF spokesperson, the firings are to ensure compliance with President Trump’s executive order aimed at reducing the federal workforce in the name of efficiency.
Prior to the firings, about 1,700 staff worked at NSF, managing their $9 billion federal budget that funds research on everything from astrophysics to civil engineering. Staff were called to an emergency meeting at 10 a.m. ET, held on Zoom and in person, where they were told by Micah Cheatham, NSF’s chief management officer, that they’d be terminated by the end of the day, without severance. According to sources who were present, NSF Director Sethuraman Panchanathan, who ordered the firings, did not attend the meeting.
The Chronicle of Higher Education: The Rise (and Fall?) of the National Science Foundation
For most of the past century, the United States has been the global leader in scientific discovery. In just the last five years, American scientists have won more Nobel Prizes than the rest of the world combined. But we weren’t always leaders in scientific advancement. It wasn’t until the 1950 establishment of the National Science Foundation (NSF), the largest funding source for basic research in the country, that America became a powerhouse of modernization.
Under the Trump administration, the same system that boosted the United States to scientific dominance is being recklessly dismantled. In the past few weeks, the newly created Department of Government Efficiency has ordered the NSF to reduce its staff by 25-50 percent to meet strict new budget targets. They have already fired 168 workers. Even more alarming, the administration is considering slashing the NSF’s $9-billion budget to just $3-4 billion, jeopardizing funding for thousands of scientists and their research. Beyond budget cuts, political interference is reshaping the NSF’s priorities. A recent executive order from President Trump mandates a review of all funded projects for flagged terms associated with DEI initiatives such as “gender,” “ethnicity” and “systemic.” Any projects containing these words must be modified to comply with the order or risk losing funding. Not only does this policy effectively roll back critical diversity initiatives, it will make research into important topics like health care much more difficult to fund.
Because many scientists conduct their work at universities, these policies are a profound threat to higher education. Many of the technologies and medical breakthroughs we rely on today — from computers to Viagra — were first developed within university research labs. American universities’ renowned science programs attract the brightest minds from around the world. In fact, 43 percent of America’s STEM work force was born in other countries. This is due both to the quality of education in our university system and the groundbreaking scientific advancements made within these institutions — made possible in large part by the National Science Foundation.
One immediate impact is an attempt to restrict research by non-tenured faculty. This is bound to have a destructive impact on the future of every research university:
The University will no longer allow non-tenure-track faculty to pay for personal research expenses using “professional development” funding, according to an Office of the University Provost memo obtained by the Maroon. The Office of the University Provost announced the change to the faculty College Council on February 25 and has already communicated the updated guidelines to instructional faculty in several divisions.
The next blog will focus on the impact of all these changes on the students.
