Sorry, my husband keeps using up my gift links, but I’ll excerpt a couple of paragraphs.
Since January, the Trump administration has made deep cuts to the nation’s science funding, including more than $1 billion in grants to the National Science Foundation, which sponsors much of the basic research at universities and federal laboratories, and $4.5 billion to the National Institutes of Health. Thousands of jobs for scientists and staff members have been terminated or frozen at these and other federal agencies, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the National Park Service.
Next year looks to be worse. The 2026 budget proposed by the White House would slash the National Science Foundation by 56.9 percent, the N.I.H. by 39.3 percent and NASA by 24.3 percent, including 47.3 percent of the agency’s science-research budget. It would entirely eliminate the U.S. Geological Survey’s $299 million budget for ecosystems research; all U.S. Forest Service research ($300 million) and, at NOAA’s Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research, all funding ($625 million) for research on climate, habitat conservation and air chemistry and for studying ocean, coastal and Great Lakes environments. The Trump administration has also proposed shutting down NASA and NOAA satellites that researchers and governments around the world rely on for forecasting weather and natural disasters.
NASA’s budget for 2026 has been reduced [again] by 25%. This budget is the smallest since NASA launched the first manned space flight in the 1961.
NASA’s science work force will be reduced by 2/3rds. More than 40 proposed missions have been dropped or indefinitely postponed.
Funding for aeronautics research (new hybrid propulsions technologies), aeronautic design, earth science, oceanography, climate science, exploratory space projects, astrophysics, and planetary science has been terminated. A planned fly by/landing on asteroid passing close to Earth 2029 has been cancelled.
Additionally, more than 4000 staff members who were civil service employees have left. (Fired/trasferred or took voluntary buyouts to prevent being fired.) There are now fewer civilians working at NASA than at any other time in its history. Most contract employees have also left.
NASA’s Goddard Space Center in Maryland, home to “the nation’s largest organization of scientists, engineers, and technologists,” according to its website, may close as early as next year.
Here is a link to a Canadian government site that is (I think) not behind a pay wall:
The difference between $1.2billion stated above and $1.7billion stated on the canada.ca web site is just the exchange rate difference between the Canadian dollar and the US dollar.
The American Academy of Pediatrics has been defunded by HHS. Grant cut offs will affect early autism screening, SIDS prevention, healthcare for rural children, support for children with birth defects, programs to educate about and prevent fetal alcohol syndrome, among others.
Jacob Richmond, a NASA spokesman, said the agency would review the library holdings over the next 60 days and some material would be stored in a government warehouse while the rest would be tossed away.
The shutdown of the library at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., is part of a larger reorganization under the Trump administration that includes the closure of 13 buildings and more than 100 science and engineering laboratories on the 1,270-acre campus by March 2026.
The library closure on Friday follows the shutdown of seven other NASA libraries around the country since 2022, and included three libraries this year. As of next week, only three — at the Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, the Ames Research Center in Mountain View, Calif., and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. — will remain open.
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This former research librarian and science archivist weeps at the loss of unique historical materials.
Saw this article about how many graduate programs/professional programs average borrowing is over the new loan limits. Health programs, Medicine, Dentistry very hard hit.
It’s devastating for graduate and professional programs. Only those from families with means who are willing to finance their programs or from families that can & will co-sign a private loan will be able to go to grad/professional school.
Time for college students to start investing in intensive foreign language: Canada is (mostly) in English of course but grad programs are expensive if you don’t win a grant.
France and Germany remain free to low tuition – it can "as high as"4k for Americans in special programs in French Universities. France also has special entrance selection to its Grandes Écoles for French speaking or Mostly-English-with-Some-French international (US) college graduates who want a degree in Engineering (or Business/Management/Finance, plus various Sciences Po programs, with various fee strata from free to about 15k tuition.)
Germany has boosted its Masters degrees in English and is either tuition-free or nominal-fee only.
In Switzerland, ETZH and EPFL (respectively German and French speaking) are among the best in the world.
Scandinavia charges some tuition but also has excellent programs.
Both are very affordable.
I know it’s not good for the US as a whole but talented students who want a Master’s degree can’t put their work on hold for years if they don’t have the means to pay for their studies at a US grad school may well need to exile themselves for their studies. In turn, this could devastate US universities.
I’m wondering if private industry will start “indentured servitude” loan offerings.
I could see hospital/health systems offering money for students accepted into medical/health programs while requiring the student to be locked into a long term contract with limited ability to renegotiate on the part of the grad student. Great way for hospitals to lock in future employees at a defined salary/benefit level.
My son is at Technical University of Delft in the Netherlands getting a Master’s Degree in engineering; the program is in English. The cost is what he would be paying as an in-state graduate student at our flagship public university.
Also, one of his high school buddies is spending this academic year at Sciences Po in Paris, to be followed by a year at the London School of Economics.
A childhood friend of my son is currently getting his masters in Physics in Munich. We visited with him on Thanksgiving. (I was also his swim coach and soccer team manager.) He said his tuition per semester was 85 EU. The program is also in English.
for the excerpts.
In turn, this could devastate US universities.