Students, researchers, faculty and leadership from universities and universities across the United States are tackling the dramatic short- and long-term impacts “over the next few decades” that are caused by freezes, cuts and funding executive orders from the Trump administration.
“We’re holding a lot of confusion on campus,” said Sarah Spretzer, vice president and chief of government relations for the American Council of Education, a nonprofit that represents more than 1,600 universities, universities and affiliated associations.
“This will have a long-term impact on the public and post-secondary education in America that we don’t think we can even begin to truly understand.”
Research grants across the United States have been frozen or reduced, federally funded scholarships have been suspended, and institutions seeking to figure out how to cover the costs of conducting research by pushing to reduce the administrative costs of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) research funding to 15%.
Donald Trump’s Congressional Budget proposes billions of dollars in cuts in federal funding for research and institutions across higher education. The lab has been closed due to reduced research related to foreign aid, including the US Institute of International Development. Trump also threatened to withdraw federal funds from universities that allow “illegal” protests.
Changes and threats have incited agencies to freeze jobs, layoffs and Farrow, reduce graduate hospitalizations, withdrawal of job openings, and reduce the amount of research they are conducting.
“The agency is rushing to figure out how to support those students as it doesn’t have access to federal funds or just ends the program,” Spreitzer added. “Changing the indirect cost rate will not suddenly make your research cheaper. Someone will have to pay for it.”
Institutions of higher education have already begun or are pretending to cut back. The University of Pennsylvania reduced enrollment for graduates at medical schools by 35% in fall 2025. Graduate students in the US report that admissions have been cancelled.
MIT, Stanford, and many other agencies have enacted employment freezes.
This week, Brown and Johns Hopkins warned of potential layoffs amid threats to federal funding revenue.
“Our entry is suspended due to many large undergraduate faculties,” said graduate worker Levin Kim. Chair of the Higher Education Labor Union, a coalition of trade unions representing more than 200,000 academic workers. The president of UAW Local 4121, representing academic workers at the University of Washington, is one of the largest public recipients of federal research funding. “We see a lot of uncertainty. Our careers are being cut now. Once things are funded, we can get it back soon. It’s wreaking havoc throughout the pipeline.”
Kim argued that Trump’s actions have “a huge, frightening effect” in their relationship to research funding despite the ongoing legal battle to prevent a freeze and cuts in research funding.
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“The attack on research currently underway is an attack on workers and the public health infrastructure in America, which will have an impact over the next few decades,” Kim said. “Clinical trials have been suspended. Research has been suspended on things like Alzheimer’s disease and cancer, what affects everyone. There is now a government acquisition to sign American health to line up pockets of millionaires.”
President of the American Association of University Professors Todd Wolfson has expressed similar concerns faced by teachers institutions in higher education, expressing significant future impacts, including work that has been suspended or reduced in response to Trump’s anti-dritisation, equality and inclusion (DEI) efforts.
“Billions of dollars of research are frozen, and it’s a study of what all Americans depend on,” Wolfson said. “My members have to fire people, close the lab, seek special circumstances to live rare supplies like animals. This was a complete and utter destruction of the US research infrastructure.”
Wolfson explained that since World War II, the federal government has partnered with institutions of higher education to develop and maintain global leadership in research and development.
“The institutions are cutting, they’re going to cut it pretty quickly. They’re going to fire people. Tuition fees will skyrocket, they’re going to cut graduate programs. They’re going to train fewer doctors and fewer engineers. This will have a very negative impact on the wider American society,” concluded Wolfson. “The Trump administration says they are trying to create a great country, while destroying the sectors that are most important to having a great, profitable, healthy, democratic country.”
