Schools most harmed and those most benefiting once NIH, DHS funding resumes?

[Anonymous]

Not trying to sound like a Cassandra, but there are no “winners” with such a capricious approach and attitude towards research funding of any kind.

Securing grants from the NIH, DOD, etc. has always been a touch-and-go proposition. No guarantees. But in an environment where all funding can be halted or altered based on the fleeting whims of people who lack curiosity or training, nobody will feel secure or optimistic.

Make no mistake about it, all universities and research institutions will experience operational and foundational losses in the long term. There may be some that will be opportunistic, but this will not last.

This was never about issues such as DEI. This has always been about control and grievance. That will be the subject line for all proposals in this administration.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Not trying to sound like a Cassandra, but there are no “winners” with such a capricious approach and attitude towards research funding of any kind.

Securing grants from the NIH, DOD, etc. has always been a touch-and-go proposition. No guarantees. But in an environment where all funding can be halted or altered based on the fleeting whims of people who lack curiosity or training, nobody will feel secure or optimistic.

Make no mistake about it, all universities and research institutions will experience operational and foundational losses in the long term. There may be some that will be opportunistic, but this will not last.

This was never about issues such as DEI. This has always been about control and grievance. That will be the subject line for all proposals in this administration.

Okay, so this administration is having the temper tantrum about research that their voters wanted.

But what does that actually mean for scientific research? Where will it be conducted and how?

[Anonymous]

Jeff, this topic also belongs in careers and jobs. It is not first about the applying to college or undergraduates, but the jobs and careers of the scientists and physicians who apply for these grants for their livelihood and use the money to get space from universities.

It is an enormous issue and deserves multiplied threads in different locations that may have a different emphasis.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don’t understand this. My understanding from NIH is that this would flag 100% of proposals because under current federal law all proposals must include a section explaining whether or why not the research would cover both sexes and all races. (So if you’re studying prostrate cancer okay to have all male subjects but if you’re studying brain cancer you’d have to have a reason why you only wanted to study men). Isn’t NSF similar? This is like designing a key word search that uses the word “and”.

Correct. The (intended) result is to flag all research as problematic. This is why it's so silly to claim that "hard" science research will be spared.

This. I was wondering the same thing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:To state it simply, all universities and research institutions will be negatively impacted by this anti-science approach.

Nobody benefits from a world view that values dogma over discovery.

I absolutely agree, of course. This is 100% destructive and terrible.

Maybe because we feels so powerless at the moment, we’re trying to figure out if there’s anything we can or should “do” to reframe our DC’s college research process re 2026.

At the moment, DC is looking at a mix of public flagships and mid-sized privates. Should we be looking at the schools’ financials - endowments, dependence on federal funding etc - to try to identify those that may weather the storm better than others? Or is that like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic?

My DD has applied to PhD programs for applied math for the fall and is very worried about how this will impact her plans.

can she add a little comp sci to her degree? Again, industry will need her skills. If she can make it (meaning, if there's still a program and professors). Good luck to her and I love reading about all these women in stem

Applied math is hugely transferable not only among academic disciplines (god I would love to have a postdoc with an applied math PhD join my (natural science) lab), but into various industries - finance, data science, etc. Tell her to ask the departments to which she's applying about where her tuition/stipend will be sourced from, especially in summer if she's offered a TA (which typically only covers 9 months). She will probably be safe, though, given the need for math TAs year-round. Good luck to her!!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Jeff, this topic also belongs in careers and jobs. It is not first about the applying to college or undergraduates, but the jobs and careers of the scientists and physicians who apply for these grants for their livelihood and use the money to get space from universities.

It is an enormous issue and deserves multiplied threads in different locations that may have a different emphasis.

Agree. This has significance way beyond college and what that significance is should be discussed in different forums.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Ok. College grant writer here. Every institution that applies for federal funds has three options for budgeting for indirect costs. First, the individual RFP may set a cap on indirect costs. For example, Department of Education often caps indirect costs at 8%. That means most colleges have to absorb the actual indirect cost associated with that grant. Second, many institutions have a federal negotiated indirect cost rate, called a NICRA, which involves an extensive review of the institution prior to award. That rate is assigned by a cognizant agency. When allowed by the funding proposal, the institution can charge this to the grant and subsequently recover these costs. Finally, if the institution doesn’t have a NICRA, then the funder may allow them to charge a diminimus rate, usually 8-10%. Usually colleges will have a mix of grants in their portfolio that vary in recovery of indirect costs, and part of my job as a grant administrator is to make sure that the portfolio is balanced and we aren’t actually loosing money by accepting grant funds. Yes, if you have too many grants with capped indirect costs, we loose $$$. Also, fyi - any institution with over 7.5m in federal funds has to submit to single audits, in addition to their regular audit, to ensure that funds are used appropriately. Maybe their is waste and fraud, but their are many mechanisms of control in place to ensure fiscal compliance.

So if you are familiar with the university research environment.... Is there a mechanism for endowment money to be used to replace the loss of this NIH and NSF funding? Are universities with large endowments going to be able to weather this and continue supporting all of the research going on at their institutions? Or is this going to significantly shrink scientific research across the board?

An endowment's most critical function is to protect itself. For a simple example, if there is an endowment of $100M, and it brings in 10% return per year, the only money that can be spent is $10M - you can't cut into the endowment itself. But if the endowment is managed such that it can bring in 12% a year, you get to spend an additional $2M (total of $12M). Or a donor can contribute $10M to the endowment, making it $110M - so that at 10% return it provides $11M in spendable funds (again, can't touch the $110M, only the gains it produces).

[Anonymous]

I guess you'd be better off applying to colleges that aren't in the AAU, but still well-regarded. They aren't as dependent on research expenditures.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Jeff, this topic also belongs in careers and jobs. It is not first about the applying to college or undergraduates, but the jobs and careers of the scientists and physicians who apply for these grants for their livelihood and use the money to get space from universities.

It is an enormous issue and deserves multiplied threads in different locations that may have a different emphasis.

I don’t have an issue with this being here. There’s nowhere that says the College and University forum has to only be about applying to college or undergraduates. But I don’t think we needed three different threads on it.

[Anonymous]

To use another metaphor, this is a sinking tide to will lower all ships.

I would NOT dissuade anyone from pursuing a career in research in any field despite the current environment if that is what they are passionate about. I would advise them that opportunities may be more limited, but their career path will undoubtedly take longer than a 4-year presidential term.

I do not see how any serious research institution will come away from this situation unscathed. So trying to read the tea leaves as to where to apply is not a useful exercise if you are considering attending a world class college/university.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So it begins.

NIH lowers allowable indirect costs from 60% to 15%.

Seismic.

Indirect costs pay for the building maintenance, admin salaries, utilities, etc.

Johns Hopkins going to get slaughtered.

I just said it in another thread, but this will result in more direct billing. You'll have grant applications with budget lines for electricity, grant specialist support, admin support, etc.

As someone who does work in this space this will just make more administrative burden and more paperwork. So the opposite purpose of the new order.

Joining to say the same. I see two likely possibilities: 1) grants are written with extremely specific language that defines in directs and directs which causes more paperwork and admin work to quantify and track and 2) shifting expenses to "direct" will open opportunities for overpriced contractor or support type stuff potentially making the total grant more expensive.

I agree we need to reduce waste but please understand NOTHING that is happening today is addressing waste despite what FOX news says. it is all GENERATING waste:

Federal workforce reduction
100,000 worker typically leave the federal workforce annually via attrition. There is no extra cost for that. Trump is claiming to pay people (if he actually pays them we will see) a buyout to not work. if less than 100,000 take the deal, that is WASTED funds. Currently 60k have agreed to take it. Every law suit associated with this is millions in WASTE.

USAID
Food and supplies stranded in ports spoiling all over the world is WASTE. Giving our adversaries the partnerships in the countries we were helping will cost MORE in the future when we are bidding for their resources.

RX drugs
Signing an EO to stop giving medicare and medicaid the ability to negotiate drug prices = WASTED spend to big pharma and higher prices for YOU.

TARIFF "threats"
Damage to trading partner relationships and general confusion now has every company figuring out how to increase prices to the consumer so they can ride out the uncertainty. More COST for you.

FAA
Firing key official and disrupting an understaffed agency WASTED lives. More planes down this week. More wasted lives and laws suits to follow. More WASTE.


If the administration really wanted to find immediate savings they would go after the biggest piece of the pie: military. Instead they are going after USAID which is less than 1% of spend. And say they DO find some $ in these ridiculous tactics? Do you really think it will be used to pay down debt or allocated to something useful that will help the average citizen??

btw my grocery prices were up 15% last week and I didn't even buy eggs!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It's undeniable at this point that NIH funded, indirectly and via EcoHealth, gain of function research that created COVID and killed millions in the process. If you're intellectually honest, you have to at a minimum acknowledge this plausibility and that is why Fauci's pardon dates to 2014, the year Obama banned gain of function research in the US. It is this vanity you must recognize if you want to understand why people are on the warpath against unchecked funding for research by unaccountable "experts" who ended up creating a Frankenstein virus in the name of good.

On top of it is all the soft social sciences research of questionable merit. If you'd paid attention to higher education in recent years, research was getting infused with DEI principles, so people putting together applications for grants had to incorporate DEI and universities also started mandating DEI topics for approval of research proposals. It wasn't everywhere and for everything but a lot of it was happening. Likewise DEI administrators were also setting mandates for academic departments, influencing the tone of research topics and this was across all academic sectors. The university DEI admins were able to do this because the Federal grantors of research funds were simultaneously doing the same thing from their end, especially under the Biden administration.

That's what the new Trump administration is going to be looking for and rooting out of higher education. No more research into transgenders or identity politics is obviously the most visible but it will trickle down in the same way DEI was trickling down into everything.

I do wonder how far they will go. Contrary to what some of you want to believe/wishcast, "billionaires" aren't keen at seeing the end of cutting edge STEM research, as that's the origin of so much innovation that is later capitalized by Silicon Valley. The funding model will change dramatically but I suspect at the end it will come out more solidly reliable and focused on serious topics, not so many of the questionable soft topics (like we saw with USAID).

There is almost nothing in this post that is accurate. You really need new sources of information and stop following the ones who were find hundreds of millions of dollars for lying to you.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:A lot of US research funding has been absolute garbage. The STEM research too.

I look at recent research papers at my kids R1 school and 80% of social science papers are DEI garbage. We don’t need more of this junk.

Maybe you simply don't understand the research and are parroting right wing BS?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Not trying to sound like a Cassandra, but there are no “winners” with such a capricious approach and attitude towards research funding of any kind.

Securing grants from the NIH, DOD, etc. has always been a touch-and-go proposition. No guarantees. But in an environment where all funding can be halted or altered based on the fleeting whims of people who lack curiosity or training, nobody will feel secure or optimistic.

Make no mistake about it, all universities and research institutions will experience operational and foundational losses in the long term. There may be some that will be opportunistic, but this will not last.

This was never about issues such as DEI. This has always been about control and grievance. That will be the subject line for all proposals in this administration.

Okay, so this administration is having the temper tantrum about research that their voters wanted.

But what does that actually mean for scientific research? Where will it be conducted and how?

It means that there will probably be less than half as much research in this country going forward but we won’t lose the least valuable half. Just stuff at the wrong place and time. It also means training programs will be totally gutted and so your children will no longe have research opportunities. There will be classes but industry internships are extremely competitive and now that will be irrelevant. It also means that going into STEM is no longer a good career prospect and so the US is ceding the biotech and computing future to China and Europe.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:DEI funding is the reason my white, straight male son gets a livable stipend from his PhD program in physics. DEI funding is why his lab can run a very successful summer research internship for undergrads, who are mostly white students from predominately undergrad institutions, to get opportunities that arent available at their home institutions. DEI funding isn’t a boogeyman that harms us, it’s keeping much of the science academia industry afloat, and I fear the future of the field will only be for those who can afford a meager stipend for 5-6 years.

+1

the right doesn't even understand what DEI funding is, because it isn't really a thing. But it has replaced CRT hysteria as the bogeyman to complain about. It is like the scene from Wall-E when on the space ship, the captain changes the color of the month or whatever it is and everyone goes from red to green. the right simply parrot en masses what their psyops media platforms tell them to.