As Trump goes after universities, students start to feel fiscal pain

IN THE EARLY weeks of the Trump administration's push to slash funding that colleges and universities rely on, grants and contracts had been cut and, in a few cases, researchers had been laid off. In recent days, the fiscal pain has come to students.

- STEPHANIE SAUL

At the University of Pennsylvania, administrators have asked departments in the School of Arts & Sciences, the university's largest school, to cut incoming PhD students. In some cases, that meant reneging on informal offers, according to Wendy Roth, a professor of sociology.

Her department had to decide which of the students would be "unaccepted." Dr Roth, chair of graduate education, was chosen to explain those decisions to them. "It's just the most terrible thing to get that kind of news when your plans are made," she said.

Since taking office, Trump has issued orders that threaten to broadly undercut the financial foundation of university-based research, including deep cuts in overhead cost reimbursements through the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Court challenges have paused some of the cuts, but universities are bracing for uncertainty. Penn could face a $250-million hit in NIH funding alone.

Last month, Katie Miller, who is working with Elon Musk's team to trim spending, said the cuts would end "liberal DEI deans' slush fund."

In some cases, schools are pre-emptively cutting their expenses as a precautionary measure. North Carolina State University announced on February 14 that it was freezing most hiring. Stanford University announced on February 26 that it was freezing staff hiring. At the University of Louisville in Kentucky, President Kim Schatzel announced an "immediate pause" on faculty and staff hiring until July. She cited the potential loss of $20-23 million in NIH research funding. Dozens of other schools have announced hiring freezes or "chills."