Early in the push to significantly cut funds the Trump administration relied on universities, grants and contracts were cut, and in some cases researchers were fired.
Recently, financial pain has come to students.
At the University of Pennsylvania, administrators have asked the faculty of the College of Arts and Sciences, the university's largest school, to cut their PhD. Student. According to Wendy Ross, a professor of sociology, that meant rejecting an informal offer.
Her department had to decide which students were “unacceptable.” Dr. Ross, chairman of graduate education, was chosen to explain those decisions to them.
“I think two of them were very upset. One of them was in tears,” she said. “It's just the most frightening thing to get that kind of news when your plans are made.”
Since taking office, the Trump administration has issued an order threatening to widespread decline of university-based research financial foundations, including deep reductions in the depth of fictitious costs through the National Institutes of Health. The court agenda suspended some of the cuts, but the university endures uncertainty. The University of Pennsylvania could face a $250 million hit with NIH funds alone.
Government members sometimes cast reductions politically as a way to reduce unnecessary government spending. Katie Miller, who works with Elon Musk's team to sort out federal spending last month, said the cut would end the “liberal Dei Deans' Slush Fund.”
In some cases, schools are preemptively reducing costs as a precaution.
North Carolina State announced on February 14 that it had frozen most jobs. Stanford announced on February 26 that it would freeze staff employment, citing “a very serious risk” to the community. At the University of Louisville in Kentucky, President Kim Schatzel announced an “immediate suspension” on faculty and staff employment until July. She cited potential losses of between $200,000 and $23 million in NIH research funding. Dozens of other schools have announced employment freezes or “chills.”
Currently, many of the cuts are in graduate school education. This relies heavily on research grants and is not chasing any number of students who dreamed of completing their PhD.
The University of California, San Diego's Graduate School of Biological Sciences program typically enrolls 25 new university students per year. This year, the number is 17.
The cuts may seem small, but biology professor Kimberly Cooper said Trump's cuts will run through college.
“I hate hearing fatal,” said Dr. Cooper, who specializes in limb development. “But at this point, I think they're trying to beat academic companies. The reduction in academic science will impact the education mission of the university as a whole.”
In Penn, the school's 32 programs have fully reduced graduation programs, the professor said. For example, the History Department was asked to offer a PhD. There are slots only from seven students, not the usual 17 students. In English, the usual cohort of 9-12 students decreases to a maximum of 6.
A letter signed by professors in 22 departments of Penn warned that the school's decision would cause reputational damage.
Requesting comment, the university pointed to a statement posted on the school's website by interim president of Penn, J. Larry Jameson.
Dr. Jameson said the school is pursuing “cost control measures and new sources of income.” He added:
Other programs that undergraduate students, such as scholarships, may also be affected if the administration clears legal hurdles as well, as it vows to target schools through anti-Semitism and diversity initiatives.
David Kazanjan, graduate chair of Penn's Comparative Literature, said reductions to graduate students would reduce opportunities for undergraduate students. Less graduate teachers could increase the size of the class, for example.
Cost reduction measures are implemented in a variety of schools, from the Ivy League and large public research universities to small public schools. The administration's decision to limit overhead rebates on National Institutes of Health grants to 15% could cut the millions schools have come to rely on to cover facilities and staff. Overhead rates usually vary depending on the recipient of the grant, but in some cases, additional refunds will provide up to 60% of the grant.
Columbia University, which receives around $1.3 billion per year in NIH funding, could lose up to $200 million a year from formula changes, according to one analysis by a group of faculty and staff and alumni.
A Columbia graduate student reported in a news release last month that university officials proposed even more draconcuts than Penn. Students from the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Following criticism, Colombia's cuts were eventually reduced, with company numbers not publicly available.
Columbia graduate workers argued there was no need to cut funding, citing university contributions that increased from $13.6 billion in 2023 to $14.9 billion at the end of 2024. For example, one of the biggest winners of the NIH dollar announced that it would offer temporary money from its own cho cho cho.
But this week, the Education Department said it would consider all of Colombia's federal contracts and grants and criticize it as not enough to curb anti-Semitism on campus. The administration has identified a $51.4 million contract between the state of Columbia and the federal government.
Schools with large donations are also the target of increasing taxation. Donations accumulated in donor funds that were typically invested over decades were considered out of the tax limits as the university operates as a nonprofit organization.
However, during Trump's first term in 2017, Republicans led the charges to impose a 1.4% excise tax on investment income from large private university contributions. There is currently a debate that it will be raised to 14% and even 21%.
The threatened NIH reductions and donation taxes come shortly after other major cuts at Public Land Grant Colleges. Among the Trump administration's first targets was a US international development program called “Feed the Future,” which funded 19 agricultural labs in 17 states. Many of these labs are currently closed.
In San Diego, already facing state budget cuts, Dr. Cooper, a professor of biology, said that fallout would have more impacts beyond universities if fewer students have passed the program and impact the entire sector of the economy.
“The bigger problem with all of this is that this is our future biomedical workforce,” she said.
