Probably not a surprise to anyone, but the NSF is downsizing and pulling funding from REU programs for this summer. I’m feeling very grateful my physics major was offered a great internship with a private company a couple of days ago. Even that decision was delayed because of tariff concerns. He is still waiting to hear back from one government funded research project that he interviewed for over a month ago and two REUs he was interested in have been cancelled. I am not trying to be political, but I am just so heartbroken for these young people like my son who are now rethinking pursuing graduate degrees and careers as researchers.
Oops just posted same in a different thread. D23 has also had 2 REU’s she applied to cancelled due to funding, super sad for everyone (literally) including the undergrads who are still trying to figure out what they want to focus their studies on!
D21 had an incredible NSF-funded internship mapping glaciers in the Andes last summer. It was a multi-year longitudinal study that was the professor’s life work. The funding is now gone.
Now we’re just waiting to hear if/when S23’s engineering summer internship will be cancelled.
With the proposed changes to the indirect overhead charges and the cuts at the NSF, I think science in the US is going to be seriously compromised. Given that a significant part of US’s competitive advantage comes from spillovers from university-based science (pharma and biotech, computer science), this disruption will likely be damaging over the long-term.
This will certainly have long term effects. It’s devastating for all the students who have worked towards getting their PhD.
S22 got accepted into a summer research program abroad. He accepted it and declined or withdrew all his US based REU offers and applications. He wasn’t willing to take the risk of US REUs not getting already awarded money.
He will still apply for a grad school this fall, but most of his applications may be abroad, likely Europe as he has an EU citizenship.
Not just kids. Acquaintance of mine is an experienced medical researcher (PhD with 30 years invested in his particular area). They got an email from the head of the institution on Friday outlining the “here are the immediate cuts” and “here are the cuts you need to plan for”. The cuts are not cosmetic- they will mean that important and time sensitive projects are going to be put on hold indefinitely. They will mean that critical staff will be furloughed. Virtually every scientist on the team will be taking immediate pay cuts, all travel to conferences and symposia and meetings with colleagues is being canceled-- even when there is a minimal amount of money saved (if an institution is paying for a team to attend a meeting, canceling at the last minute saves a few hundred dollars per head on hotels… and some airline credits. But everything else is non-recoverable). And the non-professional staff- the team that takes care of the animal subjects-- they should just let 10,000 genetically engineering mice (at a huge cost) go free because they’ve had to fire the techs who feed, weigh, clean the cages?
So what- we no longer care about cancer, alzheimer’s, parkinsons, ALS, all these complex syndromes which require collaboration between multiple scientific specialties?
Bad for the country as a whole, but probably what the plutocrat class and big business prefers, since “public” research (done at lower cost by PhD students) increases the potential of competitors getting innovative ideas or licensing research innovations that come out of university-based research.
It’s not just the NSF. They are also decimating the NIH: they have laid off 1200 out of 1800 employees. They have also cancelled all study sections, which is where grand funding is decided, so they are basically blocking all new federally funded medical research in this country. The fall-out from this will be catastrophic, both in terms of careers paused/ruined but even more for the health of all Americans.
It is contradicted by virtually everything I’ve read about the university/corporate collaborations, the “corporate skunk works” which rely on intellectual property, licensing, etc. out of universities, etc. Big Business makes no distinction between public and private U’s when figuring out who/what/how much.
When I worked in aerospace, my company invested in research at CalTech, MIT, Berkeley, Michigan, ERAU, Missouri S&T. Public, private, nobody cared. If a researcher had expertise to solve a particular problem, boom, that’s where the money went.
What is the basis of your claim? Big Business relies on academia; academia relies on Big Business, both rely on the federal government (i.e. the taxpayers) for both research expertise (Argon, Brookhaven, Fermi, Los Alamos, Oak Ridge etc.) and for the funding for “not government”-- i.e. university or corporate. I cannot imagine ANYONE adjacent to the scientific community who “prefers” cutbacks. There may be some very ignorant voters out there who think that the National Labs and the funding for scientific research is a “waste”… and that’s what these cuts are designed to do- pander to the ignorant.
And for all the blather about “private companies can do it better” (I won’t mention his name so I don’t get banned), there is no entity which can send rockets, satellites, measurement devices, drones into space which does not rely on research and the scientific gains made by NASA decades ago. You’re a billionaire and you claim you invented it all on your own? Hogwash.
Totally agree. Focusing just on medicine for a minute (and there are so many other areas that will impact us!) are these lawmakers not worried about cures for diseases at all? Maybe they just don’t care about their constituents that are benefitting from new treatments—what about their family members? Do they not care that one of them may get cancer and be out of luck? That new immunotherapy that could have saved them may be no longer. I’ve heard interviews with medical researchers at universities and I am terrified at the long lasting impact of these rash budget cuts. And I assume the costs will be far higher when people can’t get those life saving treatments.
How can there be public support at all for such cuts? It really is horrifying.
I’m not in the plutocrat class but I work with some and work with various kinds of companies. My perception is that this is not what the plutocrat class would want. They want taxpayers to fund the basic science that their companies can license. There are studies that show that huge swathes of economic gain came from defense spending (DARPA funded the original internet). NIH funding has led to all kinds of drugs being developed, often by biotech firms, who then make deals with big pharma. But they would love it if taxpayers continued to fund R&D with grad students and post-docs.
100%. And the various yelling and screaming over immigration-- the academic community and Big Business alike understand what will happen if H-1, O-Visas, even LPT/OPT disappear under the cloud of jingo-ism. Other than a former model who had the good fortune to marry a real estate developer, most O-visas are granted to PhD’s and distinguished scientists (the name “Aliens of exceptional ability” indicates what the program is typically used for.)
The fact that a few non-college grads are able to exploit the loophole doesn’t mean that the folks in the US on O-Visas are generally published and renowned professionals of “exceptional ability”.
And the Plutocrat class- other than the exceptions we can tick off on one hand- is hardly in favor of sending productive and accomplished scientists “back to where they came from”. In many instances, “Where they came from” are countries which do NOT have the capacity to support cutting edge science as we do (or at least, we used to do until a week ago…)
Family member administers, supervises and applies for grants at her university. She estimates that 80 full time faculty members tenured will lose their jobs, PLUS the researchers who work with them. And she will likely lose her job as well.
This university is a major research hub, with many research projects started that might not finish. And if they are paused, it’s not like they can just pick up where they left off. Some will need to start from scratch.
Those genetically engineered mice don’t have a long shelf-life. Ditto the primates, or even the “specially formulated” cells, synthesized blood products, etc.
For anyone who thinks you can stop and start these research projects at will- no. Wrong answer.
