President Trump's policies on education and science are a threat to Boston's identity. Here's why that matters.

Boston Globe

21-02-2025

Together, the education and health care industries employ roughly a million people in Massachusetts — nearly a quarter of all wages. This so-called eds and meds sector — which has become the state's economic superpower in
creating jobs, launching companies, and providing stability through recessions — is being rocked to its core as the Trump administration and a Republican-controlled Congress attempt to slash critical funding from the National Institutes of Health and Medicaid, and
could throw billions of dollars in student loans and grants into flux.
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The potential fallout will be felt far beyond universities and hospitals, economists and business leaders say, because the sector is
so integral to the state's economy and its competitiveness. For now, the proposed NIH cuts pose the most immediate threat because Massachusetts is the largest recipient of NIH funding per capita. (The state's institutions received about $3.5 billion in NIH grants last year to study cancer, Alzheimer's, and other diseases.)
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That could not only jeopardize medical research and ongoing clinical trials but could have significant ramifications for jobs. One analysis projects that
funding formula. The UMass Donahue Institute estimates that could lead to a loss of several thousand jobs, if not more, if Trump continues reducing other types of federal grants.
'This is a black swan event in many ways because it's so sudden and it's so encompassing,' said Michael Greeley, cofounder and general partner at Flare Capital Partners, a Boston venture capital firm that specializes in health care investments, referring to an unexpected shock to the economy.
Greeley expects universities and hospitals to feel the financial pain first, while the life sciences industry will experience the effects in a few years as the pipeline of innovations and drug development slows down.
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'The pool of companies and startups might start to shrink,' he said. 'I'm hoping it's not like a fundamental reset.'
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Eds and meds comprise by far the state's
largest category of employment, accounting for 28 percent of the labor market, according to an analysis of federal data by UMass Donahue Institute. That encompasses everything from college professors and K-12 teachers to doctors and nurses and hospital janitors, though the lion's share comes from higher education and health care.
The strength of the sector has also driven the growth of professional, business, and scientific jobs, which make up about 640,000 positions, or about 10 percent of overall state employment. Many of these roles, from lawyers to corporate scientists, emanate from the ecosystem of hospitals, universities, and venture capital that has fed the life sciences industry. The number of jobs in Massachusetts tied to research and development alone has doubled over the past decade, according to UMass Donahue, now making up 1 in 10 R&D jobs in the US.
No one expects eds and meds to lose its dominance here, but there's a growing sense that the impact of cuts could ripple out across everything from
commercial real estate
to law firms to the state budget. That has policymakers, college presidents, and business leaders scrambling to preserve what they can.
'This is going to hurt us,' said state economic secretary Yvonne Hao.
While the state economy has been solid, Hao said it's hard to predict the full brunt of the policy shifts coming out of Washington because the situation is so fluid. She believes Massachusetts is better positioned than others to weather the turmoil, especially after the state allocated nearly $4 billion of its own funds in an economic development package passed last fall to bolster key sectors like life sciences and climate tech.
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'It's probably not enough to fill the entire gap left by the federal challenges, but at least we have some ammunition here that we can control in our own state,' said Hao.
Even before Trump's return to the White House, the state's most important industries were facing economic headwinds.
Colleges and universities have been bracing for a long-anticipated
outsize impact in Massachusetts, home to
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Meanwhile, health care is under enormous financial pressure coming out of the pandemic as costs have been rising faster than revenue.
And Congress is now seeking
Mass General Brigham, the state's biggest health system and largest private employer, recently announced the largest layoff in the organization's history that will lead to hundreds of job cuts.
David L. Ryan/Globe Staff
Adding to the uncertainty is how much Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a vaccine skeptic who serves as Trump's health and human services secretary, will push for changes
disruptive to health care, and whether Linda McMahon, Trump's nominee for education secretary, can carry out his vision of abolishing the Department of Education.
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'Anything that chips away at the resiliency of eds and meds, chips away at the resiliency of the Massachusetts economy,' said Mark Melnik, director of Economic & Public Policy Research at the UMass Donahue Institute.
For now, the focus is on fighting Trump's executive order to dramatically cap so-called indirect costs in NIH grants that cover expenses including rent, electricity, lab equipment, and support staff.
Trump has proposed the NIH only cover 15 percent of indirect costs, down from close to 70 percent for some institutions. A federal judge in Boston has temporarily blocked the measure after 22 attorneys general,
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With so much at stake, university and business leaders have been working with the Massachusetts congressional delegation on strategies to protect NIH funding — though with Democrats out of power in Congress, the state's political leverage is at a low point.
Marty Meehan, the former congressman who is president of the University of Massachusetts, is making the case that medical research shouldn't get caught up in partisan politics. 'It doesn't save Democratic lives, Republican lives, independent lives. It saves American lives,' said Meehan.
Business leaders want to impress on Trump that NIH grants are a major economic driver. The advocacy group United for Medical Research estimates that every dollar invested in NIH-funded research generates
'It's ironic someone who should be trying to promote the economy not understand that attacking the Massachusetts portion of spending is going to have a dramatic impact on everyone else,' said Jay Ash, CEO of the Massachusetts Competitive Partnership, a group that represents some of the state's largest companies. 'As goes the Massachusetts research economy, so goes the rest of the country.'
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Massachusetts became a medical research hub thanks to a potent combination of academic institutions like Harvard, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and UMass Chan Medical School,
working closely with teaching hospitals like Mass. General, Brigham & Women's, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, and UMass Memorial Health.
The synergy attracted NIH grants starting in the 1950s, driving breakthroughs and eventually
spawning a biotechnology cluster.
Venture capital seeded startups, but a key inflection point came in 2008 with the passage of a $1 billion initiative under then-Governor Deval Patrick that poured money into life sciences and cemented the state's reputation as a global leader. Similar investments have continued under the Baker and Healey administrations.
Cambridge's Kendall Square, pictured in 2023, is the heart of Greater Boston's life sciences ecosystem.
Jessica Rinaldi/Globe Staff
John Maraganore, the former founding CEO of Alnylam Pharmaceuticals in Cambridge, fears Trump's proposed cuts will weaken the life sciences industry and give a competitive advantage to China. Maraganore doesn't have a problem with
scrutinizing how
grant money is spent; he just doesn't agree with the Trump administration's approach.
'It is foolhardy and dangerous to apply a Musk-ian, kitchen sink approach to this very complex topic,' said Maraganore, referring to Trump adviser Elon Musk's blunt methods to shrink bureaucracy. 'I really would urge the administration to take a step back and think longer term around how to do this in a more thoughtful, methodical manner, where the net result is not a destruction of something which is so important, frankly, to US competitiveness in the world.'
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The sense of urgency to protect eds and meds is palpable from campuses to corner offices. What's at stake is no less than Massachusetts's ability
to attract and retain the best and the brightest.
'There is an envy around the world for what we have. It's part of who we are, it's part of the brand,' said Jim Rooney, CEO of the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce. 'We would all suffer if we can't maintain the status we have.'
Shirley Leung is a Business columnist. She can be reached at