Yves here. Even as the press is covering actual and prospective damage to the US economy and our badly tarnished image of global leadership, Trump-created below-the-waterline damage continues on other fronts. This article describes the continuing harm to the one-time US dominant position in science, which depended on funding to research programs at major universities. This post provides an update on how the funding picture looks. There is still a lot of confusion, with some schools having entered into deals but it not being clear if payments have been resumed, others suing to obtain previously committed monies, and the Administration continuing to impound considerable Congressionally approved programs of the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation.
The article identifies other vectors for attack on universities, such as making it harder for students to get student loans.
By Brendan Cantwell, Professor of Higher, Adult, and Lifelong Education, Michigan State University. Originally published at The Conversation
Several prominent universities, including Columbia University and the University of Pennsylvania, made headlines in 2025 in a dizzying back-and-forth with the federal government. The Trump administration cut large amounts of research funding to universities. Some pushed back, and others hatched settlements to get the money restored.
So how have these confrontations between higher education and the White House played out over the past year, now that they have dropped out of the spotlight?
Amy Lieberman, education editor at The Conversation U.S., spoke with Brendan Cantwell, a scholar of higher education at Michigan State University, to understand how the Trump administration is adopting a more subtle tactic to block funding to universities.
Where does Trump’s attempt to withdraw funding from universities stand?
Several universities entered into settlements with the Trump administration in 2025 – including the University of Pennsylvania, Columbia University, Cornell University, Northwestern University and Brown University – to restore research funding the government pulled. We don’t really know how those deals are being enforced. They appear to be working, in the sense that the government has not complained and the schools have received the targeted funding that the government canceled.
In another case, Harvard University never entered into a deal with the Trump administration and instead sued the government in April 2025 to block a US$2.7 billion funding freeze. Federal courts restored Harvard’s funding, but we don’t have a lot of specific knowledge on how this funding was restored. The government appealed this ruling in December 2025.
In October, the administration also proposed an agreement, called the Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education, that would provide funding advantages for universities that agreed to change their admissions practices to cap the percentage of international students that they enroll, among other policy shifts.
There was almost universal skepticism and condemnation of this deal among schools, and it fell apart, aside from a few small schools not initially invited that said they would sign on.
What is your research focused on right now?
I am thinking about how the administration is shifting from making targeted deals with universities and more toward using legislative and rule-making processes to achieve its goals.
These deals with universities in 2025 were really unusual. I think they are going to become less and less effective for the administration, as they face losses in court. Universities have also realized that they could not agree to a deal with the administration and still prevail.
Now, we are seeing the administration impose its priorities in other ways, in part through President Donald Trump’s 2025 big tax and spending cuts and new rules at the Department of Education. This approach retains the Trump administration’s ideological preferences, but uses more normal routes.
Are they placing more limits on research funding, or what is the goal?
The Trump administration in 2025 wanted to reduce funding dramatically to the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation – and to NASA, in particular. Congress rejected those requests and instead produced what was essentially a level funding picture for university research.
What isn’t clear is how much of the money appropriated by Congress is going to make its way into new grants for research. Much of the funding that Congress appropriated, so far, has not been released.
We know that in 2025, federal agencies made fewer grants than in past years. The grants the government did make tended to be a bit larger, and winning a grant became more competitive. This approach gives the administration more flexibility in funding the kinds of projects that it prefers.
In my assessment, it seems likely that the government will do the same again this year. The administration may also attempt to withhold a portion of the money that Congress appropriated for scientific research.
Over the course of the year, we are going to see how this plays out. Is the administration just dragging its feet, using whatever administrative levers it has to slow-walk things? Or, is it going to attempt to divert research funding to other priorities and now spend it in a way that Congress did not appropriate? We don’t really know. I do know that universities and scientific research organizations are very concerned about this possibility.
If this money doesn’t start to flow, we probably will see legal challenges from universities and scientific organizations.
How long does it take for delayed funding to become evident in research?
The effects are almost immediate and then build over time.
Some of the grants we expected to be awarded in the first two months of the year have not been awarded. In 2025, thousands of grants were canceled and some agencies made up to 25% fewer grants than they had awarded in prior years.
As the year goes on, unless the pace of awards increases, we can expect the total amount of money that goes out to researchers to be even lower than it was in 2025.
This is the bottom line: Congress continues to fund research, but all money is not making its way to researchers.
What does it look like as the Trump administration shifts its tactics?
One of the ways the administration seems like it will go after universities is by making it harder for students to qualify for student loans. The tax and spending cuts bill, for example, put caps on federal student loan borrowing at the graduate level.
This is more of a normal conservative idea; that the availability of student loans has encouraged universities to offer more low-quality programs at the undergraduate and graduate level which don’t help students. I think these conservative ideas with some mainstream appeal may be the focus of the administration moving forward, in addition to administrative foot-dragging.
Overall, I think that we may see less of these big, direct confrontations between the Trump administration and universities. It worked in the sense that they got some initial concessions from universities, but it is not really clear if those concessions amounted to a major victory for the administration.
The political boundaries of research are also becoming narrower. You can’t do climate research and expect to get federal funding right now.
I think that the federal government is going to continue to restrict money from universities. There is going to be this persistent, progressive shrinking of research funding. But the administration has either not been willing or able to impose a sudden collapse of university funding and bring schools to their knees.
7 comments
Comments are closed.
Assistant professor in STEM here, I have quite a few pending grants, and to the best of my knowledge, they have not yet been read. That is not surprising, some of these were scheduled later than normal (e.g. after congress approved funding), which means that the proposals were submitted late, and that they will be evaluated late. I don’t know if the review panels have even met.
It does make it hard to plan, I don’t know what level of resources I’ll have in the coming years, which creates uncertainty. My department is admitting exceptionally few graduate students because my situation is everybody else’s situation, which is unfortunate for us as this is a national problem. The graduate student applicant pool might have been the best it’s ever been, as entry has gotten more competitive, but we are not in a position to take advantage. A lot of people who would normally get into multiple programs are now getting into none.
There are also fewer teaching assistant lines in addition to an uncertain number of research assistant lines, which I think is because the state is cutting funding as it wants to pay for tax cuts. This exacerbates the issue.
I did take a look at the faculty job listings out of curiosity, there were very, very few job listings this year compared to previous years. There were some, yes, but very few.
I read between the lines of Elon Musk’s tweets, some of them, he seems to have a chip on his shoulder about academia and government labs. That’s my impression. But he represents a lot of power. I suspect that he wants academic science abolished and replaced with Grok. Good luck with that.
A FOX News on-air person used the phrase “the scourge of higher education” last night. Just said that in the course of an opinion panel show. Not any type of program or WOKE or any specifics. Kit and kaboodle a scourge. That was the basis of the conversation.
Thanks for this post.
It isn’t just the latest admin, the T admin.
Politicians at state and national level have been cutting higher ed funding for decades.
And now they sound alarmed that China and other countries are “suddenly” closing in on if not outstripping the US in science and tech fields. How can that be?!!
Insert my very long rant here.
To the neoliberals: The Market is speaking.
How China Is Outperforming the United States in Critical Technologies
https://itif.org/publications/2025/09/23/how-china-is-outperforming-the-united-states-in-critical-technologies/
You outsourced US manufacturing for cheap labor. Because Markets. China saw its chance and it took it. China supports its higher ed and tech/research development programs. China is thinking of its future long term, imo. That used to be true once upon a time in the US and the West, before the short term greed of neoliberalism captured political thinking in the West, imo. / end abbreviated rant.
Related to higher ed funding, I just saw some stats from ETS (of TOEFL test) on the origin of inbound students to the USA in fall 25 vs fall 24. Big declines from China (-30% from 73k) and India (-58% from 64k), the two largest sending countries. The only increases: Zimbabwe, Serbia, and Israel, and these on the scale of 10s or 100s of students. This coming year is looking to be even worse. As I understand it, Indian applicants really just cannot get an appointment to interview for a visa.
As I understand, the Harvard lawsuit is just for restoration of last year’s funding. Thus, success in the case does not guarantee unrestricted access to future US Government research funding initiatives.
I’m at one of the universities that made a deal with the Trump administration. This involved a $75 million payment, in exchange for release of $790 million of NIH funding that had been frozen during 2025 (https://www.northwestern.edu/president/news/federal-agreement/). For 8 months or so before the deal, the university had been covering these costs itself.
Of note, the substantial endowments of the university appear not to have been immediately available. As I understand, converting these endowments to cash can be an arduous process. Moreover, some are restricted due to donor preference. For example, construction began as planned on an expensive new football stadium irrespective of the NIH funding freeze.
The agreement with the Trump administration is for 3 years, with the $75 million as staged payments of $25 million per year. A pledge has been made that these payments will not come from donor funds. The university expects to have no restrictions on gaining future federal research grants over this period, other than the long-understood, competitive, merit-based NIH application process followed for all extramural activity.
National labs are facing issues too, some are running on fumes, a lot of senior scientists are using sick and vacation leave to keep their research teams afloat. The new funding from Congress likely won’t come in until June. There are labs laying off people now just to reach June, and then will have to start hiring again. In addition, there are the research censorship issues, increased job requirements on staff, etc. The national labs could use collective bargaining.