On Monday, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) posted on X that it would terminate over 400 grants, adding up to some $250 million in funding, to Columbia University over its response to pro-Palestinian protests. The following day, the Trump administration pulled $800 million in USAID-related grants from Johns Hopkins University, academia’s biggest research and development spender, underscoring the importance of reimagining the university.

These cuts come on top of last month’s announcement of major rollbacks to what are known as indirect costs — money the NIH gives research institutions on top of project-specific grants to cover necessary expenses like building maintenance, utilities, and administrative staff salaries. Many universities — both large and small, public and private — rely on the NIH to sustain a lot of their day-to-day operations.

Any threat to that funding poses an existential threat to higher education. Without the jobs, medical research, and technological developments made possible by these institutions, people outside of academia could miss out on breakthrough treatments for diseases like cancer, and will be more vulnerable to public health crises. As a result, the US will likely lose its technological competitiveness on a global scale, which could damage the economy in the long run.

The indirect cost cuts have been temporarily blocked by a federal judge, but the chaos still compelled many universities to preemptively tighten their belts. Some institutions are paring back on graduate programs: freezing new faculty hires and PhD student applications, accepting fewer students than usual, or even rescinding existing offer letters. The UMass Chan Medical School pulled back on all of its admissions offers for the fall 2025 term, blaming funding uncertainty for biomedical research.

Why exactly has the Trump administration seemingly declared war on academic biomedical research? In theory, depriving future researchers of places in academia could push them toward the private sector, which potentially aligns with a conservative pro-business approach. But the antipathy goes deeper than that.

Read the full article about reimagining the university by Celia Ford at Vox.