How the Trump Administration Is Dismantling America's Educational System
And why that matters to all of us
The current administration’s dismantling of our democractic system has many far-reaching effects. Trump’s “initiatives” in education are among the most disturbing. I reached out to long-time friend Kristin Wensel, who has spent her adult life as an educator and scientist, and has been tracking the specifics of how American education and research will be adversely affected. Kristin generously wrote the following post.
These days, the news comes fast and furious. What may have shocked us last week is forgotten amid the onslaught of other headlines. It’s increasingly difficult to pay attention to the flood of information while we maintain our mental health and balance our busy lives. Despite this obvious challenge, it is nonetheless necessary to understand how these consequences will affect our collective futures.
My family is a science-centric household. I am a former clinical research professional and science tutor, with a degree in biology. My husband earned his doctorate in virology. Our son is a senior undergraduate physics major who is currently awaiting responses to his doctoral program applications at multiple U.S. universities. One of the main stories that concerns me is the current administration’s deliberate dismantling of the higher education system, specifically in the STEM fields.
Allow me to give you a brief summary:
1) The Trump administration has threatened to pull federal funding from all schools (from preschools to universities) that do not eliminate diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives or that do not prohibit the use of race in “decisions related to admissions, hiring, promotion, compensation, financial aid, scholarships, prizes, administrative support, discipline, housing, graduation ceremonies and all other aspects of student, academic and campus life.” This led to mass confusion. Effectively, it has meant everything from investigating programs focused on assisting students of color who are earning their PhDs and the universities that accepted them, to eliminating clubs and housing meant to support and serve students of color. (For more detailed information about DEI, please read the following articles at US News and NY Times.)
2) In addition, Trump has vowed to cut federal funding to colleges and universities it has accused of antisemitism. (1) Note from Dorothy: The administration has never clearly defined antisemitism. Any acts that harm or perpetuate hatred toward a specific people group or faith tradition should be stopped. Opposition to the Israeli govt.’s destruction of Palestine does not necessarily represent antisemitism.
Columbia University recently learned of the immediate cancellation of $400 million in federal grants and contracts with an additional $5 billion in grant commitments under review. (2) The cancellation of grants heavily affected students and early career scientists receiving the grants. (3) To illustrate the gravity of this loss, StatNews reports that the Trump administration has canceled the Diabetes Prevention Program, a landmark, nationwide 30-year study following patients with prediabetes and diabetes, likely because Columbia has managed the latest phase of the study, which has tracked the development of Alzheimer’s and dementia among study participants. (4)
On March 13, the Trump administration further threatened to permanently end all federal funding to Columbia unless it cedes control of its international studies department and implements sweeping changes to other campus policies. (5) This is unprecedented.
The administration has announced investigations into allegations of antisemitism at 60 additional colleges and universities, using the same argument it gave prior to rescinding grants to Columbia University. (6)
Johns Hopkins University, the nation’s largest supporter of research and development, lost $800 million in grants when USAID was shuttered, leading the university to cancel health programs and reduce staff. (7)
Grants from the National Institutes of Science, NASA, Department of Energy, USDA, and other departments have been flagged for review and elimination. Studies that have previously been vetted and reviewed by the scientific community are now being eliminated because they have been deemed to “no longer meet agency priorities” as defined by politicians. (8, 9)
3) Additionally, the administration has worked to limit the NIH’s funding for research universities. The NIH is the world’s biggest supporter of biomedical research.
Though the legality of the order has been challenged and is currently proceeding through the courts, the NIH has attempted to limit indirect grant funding for research to 15%, well below the average of 27-28% received by most universities. (10) Indirect funds are congressionally protected by a 2018 appropriations bill prohibiting modifications to NIH’s indirect cost funding. (11)
Trump has argued that the large endowments of these private institutions can make up the cost difference. Yet, these decisions equally affect smaller and public research institutions. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, of the combined total of endowments at U.S. colleges and universities in fiscal year 2021, about half belonged to just twenty institutions. (12) The vast majority of the institutions that will be affected by this decision do not have large endowments.
Most endowments are legally restricted to narrowly defined purposes or projects, as outlined by the giver of the endowment, and therefore cannot be used for other purposes. (13)
House Republicans have also proposed a bill that would raise the excise tax levied on certain private university endowment profits from 1.4% to 21%, further reducing the size of college endowments. (14)
4) The current administration has proposed eliminating the Department of Education, whose responsibilities include administering grants to schools serving low-income communities, administering Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) grants providing money to help districts serve students with disabilities, and managing college financial aid and federal student loans.
On March 11, the department announced that it is laying off nearly 50% of its workforce. (15)
All but two of the regional offices of the Department of Education have been shuttered. The School Participation Division, the group that manages colleges’ eligibility for federal grants, relied heavily on these regional offices. (16)
Staffing cuts of nearly 1000 employees at the Office of Financial Aid may also make it harder for students to access financial aid. (17)
So, what’s the upshot of all of these changes? How are the universities and colleges across the nation reacting? How will this affect current and future generations of students?
Universities are slashing staffing and freezing all new hires, across the entire system. Not just faculty, but support staff as well. (18)
Graduate programs at research universities across the nation are cutting way back or completely eliminating admissions to doctoral programs in every department. This is not limited to the STEM fields. (19, 20, 21, 22)
Offers of admissions to U.S. PhD programs already extended for this coming year have been rescinded. (23, 24)
Current PhD students have lost the grant funding to complete their research after years of work. Some are losing their advisors, their labs and their programs entirely. (25)
Recent graduates are having trouble finding post-graduate opportunities (26)
Students who planned to pursue these programs in the US are now considering a move overseas to study abroad. (27)
Some research universities are seriously considering the possibility of bankruptcy. (28)
Ongoing research at medical teaching hospitals all over the US have been paused or canceled (29)
Students who require financial aid assistance to attend school are now uncertain whether they can find funding. (30)
Already astronomical tuition costs may increase dramatically, to make up for the costs of education and research previously covered by federal grants (31)
Major thinkers and educators at our universities and institutions, across all departments—the ones who have written the books and advanced their fields—are now resigning or retiring early. (32).
For all its faults (and there are plenty), U.S. higher education institutions are the envy of the world and their strengths benefit all Americans. The best and brightest graduate students from all over the world vie for coveted slots at U.S. academies, specifically for their world-renowned strength in research techniques and capabilities. The majority of the world’s Nobel laureates are American professors. (33) Early in my career, I witnessed how our global leadership in medical care and scientific research led many foreign dignitaries to bring their families to American hospitals affiliated with U.S. universities for treatment. Many Americans, when faced with devastating diagnoses, will travel great distances seeking treatment from the top medical specialists at these same teaching hospitals. When all conventional treatments have failed, patients pray they can participate in the latest clinical study conducted at these university’s medical facilities.
Our medical and scientific research depends on federal funding. The partnership between the federal government and universities that was established after World War II was created to continue the incredibly successful war-time scientific research effort during times of peace, and it has been the driving force of our economy ever since. (34) Industry is focused on commercial outcomes. Private companies are too risk-averse to spend money on the basic research that may eventually lead to novel discoveries. (35) Most basic research is done by student researchers and professors at universities across the country, long before the value of the work is fully understood. And of course, not every research study knows where it will take them: the current craze for GLP-1 weight loss drugs began in a lab studying the venom of Gila monsters. (36) Even successful commercial research may not lead to market profitability for decades. Trump’s decisions to cut funding will lead to less research in every field; cancer studies, genetics, Alzheimer’s, physics, economics and much, much more.
In three to five years, as a direct result of the current administration’s recent decisions, we will have significantly fewer doctors, scientists, teachers, and trained leaders in the US.
In a decade, it’ll only be compounded. In fifteen to twenty years’ time, the scientific discoveries that would’ve have been funded by these federal scientific and educational grants and conducted by the students at these universities will not have occurred, leading to missed opportunities to advance science and medicine. (37, 38) The impact to the loss of economic contributions of the NIH grant funding alone—estimated to have supported 408,000 jobs and generated over $94 billion in new economic activity nationwide in 2024, or $2.56 for every $1 spent—will be compounded every year. That doesn’t even consider the economic loss of the innovations and jobs created by the many new companies that grow out of federally funded university research or the loss of secondary university staffing jobs that employ high percentages of the local community.
Currently, our greatest global competition, China, is on the verge of major scientific breakthroughs that will enable them to advance their own agenda on the world stage. The US is already facing a physician shortage expected to increase dramatically by 2036. One in 8 teaching positions across the U.S. are either unfilled or filled by someone uncertified to teach, and the U.S. is already falling behind its peers on the world’s educational stage.
Dismantling the very institutions responsible for training the next cohort of doctors, scientists, teachers and thinkers needed to address these issues and de-funding the research that would lead to further breakthroughs in every field is unfathomable.
The graduating college class of 2025 is the same class that dealt with COVID restrictions during their final years of high school and first years of college. They are resilient and strong; they will not give up easily. If they need to leave the U.S. to follow the calling they have been given, they will do so. Just as the major thinkers and innovators of the 20th century fled Europe for the states during the World Wars, we are about to witness the same “brain drain,” as these students and academics—the Einsteins, Schrödingers and Francks of our time—now consider an exodus from the U.S. and their fields.
If you think I am exaggerating, please know that this is exactly what I am witnessing among the graduating college class of 2025. My son and his classmates who had already applied to U.S. graduate programs prior to Trump’s inauguration are now receiving letters of rejection that read more like apologies, acknowledging that the uncertainty around future federal funding affected the admissions decisions this year. They are choosing to either give up on their dreams of graduate studies altogether or apply to overseas programs. These and other potential graduate students like them all over the country are the future leaders, thinkers, and researchers that will define America’s medical and scientific contributions in the years to come. They are concerned their careers have been cut short before they can even start. If the U.S. is not interested in what they have to offer, they’re going to find other places that will enable them to contribute somehow.
I called my son on a recent evening, after he’d received yet another rejection letter. I wanted to help him process his options now that he’d heard back from all but one of the nine doctoral programs to which he’d applied. I suggested that he consider taking a year off to work, or maybe try an internship and apply again next year. I even gently broached the possibility of choosing another field of study for his graduate work. Anything to try and forge a path forward, when the doors are closing on the dream he’s held since he was a teen. He listened to my suggestions graciously, God love him.
In the end, though, he was firm: he is resolved to do everything he can to pursue what God has called him to do. He cannot stop trying to solve the scientific questions to which he feels so strongly called when the world so urgently needs the answers now. He will not allow the malicious capriciousness of this administration to deter him. It may not turn out exactly as he’d envisioned it, but he will find a way forward, one way or the other. As I hung up the phone, conflicted, I was struck by a thought: as much as I am angry at the obstacles that have been put in his way, his determination to forge ahead is a form of resistance.
Societies often don’t appreciate the benefits of an institution until it’s gone. The Trump administration is breaking what cannot easily be fixed. The long-term effects of the active dismantling of our higher education institutions will be felt for decades by the entire US population and the world.
Header photo by Nathan Dumlao/Unsplash.
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Sources:
(2) https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-00812-x
(7) https://www.wsj.com/health/healthcare/johns-hopkins-federal-funding-foreign-aid-cut-ca841d31
(9) https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-00703-1
(11) https://www.highereddive.com/news/nih-indirect-cost-rate-cap-funding-cut-ags-lawsuit/739735/
(12) https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=73
(13) https://www.acenet.edu/Documents/Facts-About-College-and-University-Endowments.pdf
(19) https://apnews.com/article/trump-cuts-research-funding-nih-duke-7f24b33bbad54490583520536ab40e0c
(23) https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/06/us/politics/trump-university-funding-grad-student-cuts.html
(28) https://undark.org/2025/03/10/nih-funding-cuts-universities/
(29) https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/02/13/upshot/nih-trump-funding-cuts.html
(31) https://collegeaidpro.com/federal-funding-cuts-and-tuition-increases-impact-college-families/
(33) https://phys.org/news/2020-10-american-universities-dominate-science-nobels.html
(34) https://www.sciencecoalition.org/sparking-economic-growth/federal
(35) https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/15/opinion/trump-research-cuts.html
(36) https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/13/magazine/venom-animals-drugs-ozempic.html
(38) https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-00754-4
Many immigrants I've interviewed for my podcast have shared that they initially came for higher education opportunities in the US.
Thank you Dorothy and Kristin for sharing this very sobering article even though it unfortunately confirms my concerns regarding ongoing medical research in the US.
These decisions are not only deeply shortsighted, but deeply discouraging for the many families who live with diagnosed health conditions that are and will be affected by the cuts to education and medical research.