Since he took office, President Trump and his administration have fired thousands of government employees, frozen government spending, eliminated foreign aid and slashed funding for renewable energy.
Alas, Trump and his Republican allies may not pay the full political price for their actions because the disastrous effect of many of their deeds will not be felt for some time. Nowhere is this more apparent than in higher education.
For all their faults, American colleges and universities continue to dominate international rankings, in significant part because the U.S. spends more on academic research and development than any other country. As a result, the U.S. has long been “the global leader in scientific discovery,” with American scientists winning “more Nobel prizes than the rest of the world combined.”
This was not always true. Until World War II, the federal government provided little funding for basic research, and the U.S. lagged other countries in scientific discoveries. To facilitate the development of war-related technology, President Franklin D. Roosevelt created the National Defense Research Committee.
In 1950, the committee became the National Science Foundation. The goal was to “ensure U.S. leadership in science and engineering” by supporting research and education at universities across the country, in an environment “relatively free from the adverse pressure of convention, prejudice, or commercial necessity.” The foundation now funds roughly a quarter of academic science research, leading to discoveries as diverse as “Doppler radar, bar codes, the modern Internet, web browsers, MRI, laser eye surgery, DNA analysis and synthetic biology.”
Despite the enormous success of this partnership, the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency has ordered the National Science Foundation to shrink its staff by 25 to 50 percent. Even as China and other competitors double down, the administration is considering slashing the NSF budget from $9 billion to $3 to 4 billion, with devastating consequences for American scientific innovation, economic competitiveness and national security.
A similar story is playing out at the National Institutes of Health, which distributes $35 billion annually to support biomedical research. About a quarter of the allocation helps fund universities’ grant-related facilities and administrative expenses, referred to as “indirect costs.” That overhead helps universities pay for the laboratories, equipment, utilities and staff needed to carry out high-quality research.
A few weeks ago, NIH announced it would cap indirect costs, which currently average about 28 percent of direct costs, at 15 percent, a rate that would force most universities to dramatically reduce or terminate existing and future research programs.
NIH supports 11,000 cancer research projects, 9,000 infectious disease projects and a host of other studies in areas ranging from heart disease to diabetes. NIH discoveries have yielded countless life-saving treatments and research breakthroughs, including the mRNA technology that made rapid production of COVID vaccines possible. Indeed, “by some measures, the United States produces more influential health-sciences research than the next 10 leading countries combined,” as the New York Times put it.
All of that is now at risk. Each of the 10 universities that receive the most NIH funding stands to lose over $100 million a year. Although a federal court has ordered a temporary stop to the cuts, hundreds of studies have ground to a halt, “including ones on pancreatic cancer, brain injuries and child health.” And major research universities have already begun to freeze hiring, pause graduate student admissions and cut other costs.
Supporters of NIH’s new approach often note that universities accept grants from private foundations with low indirect-cost reimbursement rates and suggest that university endowments can make up any shortfalls. Both claims are misleading. Foundations use different methodologies than the government to calculate indirect costs and often fund work that does not require the kind of expensive lab-based biomedical research supported by NIH. And university endowments are already committed to funding a host of other needs, including financial aid for students.
Moreover, university endowments are already under pressure. Although nonprofits providing important social goods are generally tax-exempt, Congress in 2017 imposed a 1.4 percent excise tax on net investment earnings at universities with endowments greater than $500,000 per student. Congress is now considering proposals that would sharply increase the tax and the number of institutions subject to it, would force colleges to pay some of the cost of student loan defaults and would tax student scholarships as income.
The act of crippling college and university finances may appeal to a president who has pledged to “reclaim” universities from “Marxist maniacs and lunatics,” eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion programs and abolish the Department of Education. But even those who feel colleges and universities have become too “woke” should think long and hard about the implications of the Trump administration’s policies.
In the near term, new medical treatments and other scientific discoveries will dwindle, lives will be lost and careers disrupted. Some Americans will protest, but most will move on and respond to issues with a more immediate impact on their lives.
In the long run, American colleges and universities will lose their global preeminence, innovation will suffer, future scientists, doctors, artists and philosophers will not get trained and potentially path-breaking discoveries will not be made. It will be difficult or impossible to make up for lost ground. And most Americans will not remember how it happened or who should be blamed.
Economist John Maynard Keynes famously wrote that “in the long run, we are all dead.” Trump is counting on it.
Glenn C. Altschuler is the Thomas and Dorothy Litwin Emeritus Professor of American Studies at Cornell University. David Wippman is emeritus president of Hamilton College.
