On Monday at noon, President Donald Trump stood in the U.S. Capitol rotunda and took the presidential oath of office in an inauguration ceremony. Trump’s presidential campaign promised a departure from former President Joe Biden administration’s policies, beginning with dozens of executive orders addressing climate policy, birthright citizenship and diversity, equity and inclusion. Among the possible shifts under the Trump administration are changes to federal funding for science and research.
During his first term, Trump proposed cuts to organizations like the National Institutes of Health and National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Heading into his second term, Trump, along with both chambers of Congress, has suggested cost-cutting reforms to the NIH, which invests most of its budget into medical research at institutions like the University of Michigan.
In an email to The Michigan Daily, Public Policy professor Donald Moynihan wrote that if federal research funding is cut, it could mean major changes for the University’s research funding and faculty numbers.
“For big research universities like Michigan, federal research funding is at the heart of their budget,” Moynihan wrote. “If that is significantly reduced it will create a large budget hole that will have to either be filled in elsewhere or will mean that the university becomes smaller.”
Of the $2.04 billion that the University spent on research in the 2024 fiscal year, $1.17 billion came from federal funding. Of that, the NIH provided nearly $762 million. The University was the fifth-highest recipient of funding from the NIH among higher education institutions in FY 2023.
In an email to The Daily, University spokesperson Kay Jarvis wrote that the University’s Federal Relations Office is working with other higher education institutions to advocate for continued federal research funding.
“Whenever a new party assumes control of Congress or the White House, it raises questions about how a shifting political landscape may impact federal agencies, funding structures, national policy and the availability of federal research dollars,” Jarvis wrote. “The University’s Federal Relations Office is diligently tracking new developments and will continue to work in close collaboration with peers in higher education and other institutions to advocate for federal research funding that saves and improves lives and creates opportunities for our state, nation and world.”
In addition to direct funding, research grants also include indirect costs, which cover administrative costs that come along with implementing the grant. Moynihan wrote that cutting funding for indirect costs is one way the federal government could reduce research spending.
“Reducing those indirect rates would reduce the size of awards to universities,” Moynihan wrote. “The federal government generally offers more generous indirect rates than philanthropic funders, and so this loss would be hard to cover.”
Despite Trump’s previous attempts to reduce funding for research, his proposed budget cuts were largely rejected by Congress, and in 2018, Trump approved the largest increase in U.S. research spending since 2009. However, Moynihan believes it’s likely that the second Trump administration will be more aggressive about cutting research funding than the first, citing an increase in loyal cabinet members and animosity towards higher education among Trump’s supporters.
“I think the second Trump administration will be generally more focused on attacking higher education than in the past for a number of reasons,” Moynihan wrote. “Many of those with senior positions in government … blame higher education for younger students holding views that they disagree with, and so want to compel universities to adopt positions more consistent with their views. The irony is that having spent years complaining that campuses do not respect free speech, they would be using government power to compel their preferred speech.”
In an interview with The Daily, LSA senior Matthew Pang, co-president of BioCatalyst, a student organization that aims to empower undergraduate biology research, said he believes most scientists hope to be able to focus on their research without worrying about funding.
“I think the hope is that us as scientists are kind of still able to focus on the science more than where the money is coming from,” Peng said. “So obviously, it’s a very, very essential portion of our work, but at the end of the day, I hope that science remains scientific, essentially, where it’s not bogged down by different external factors, and we can focus on the key issues at hand.”
Daily Staff Reporter Abigail VanderMolen can be reached at vabigail@umich.edu.
The post How a second Trump administration might affect research funding at UMich appeared first on The Michigan Daily.
Leave a Reply