NIH grants plummeted $2.3 billion in Trump’s first months, as federal-academia partnership crumbles

There are growing signs that uncertainty around federal funding is already narrowing the pipeline that feeds the nation’s biomedical workforce. STAT first reported in February that some universities were pausing and cutting back graduate admissions in the life sciences. To quantify these impacts, STAT recently reached out to 42 institutions to request data on how the size of their incoming cohort of biomedical Ph.D. trainees compares with previous years.

Fifteen institutions responded, and another had a relevant internal email that STAT obtained. Six of these institutions reported little to no change, while the other 10 saw an average decrease of about a third in the size of their incoming cohorts. The most dramatic example is UMass Chan Medical School, which in March rescinded all 65 of its provisional admission offers, citing funding uncertainty. The program later admitted 10 students who were already working in labs at the medical school, according to a spokesperson.

These are cuts that could have deep and long-lasting impacts, warned Suzanne Ortega, president of the Council of Graduate Schools, an organization with more than 450 member universities.

“It’s not just that the capacity to generate research in labs right now on campuses is jeopardized,” Ortega said. “The future of the enterprise is jeopardized because we are not training the scientists we need for the next generation of innovation and research.”