Latest news with #JonFansmith
The Hill
10 hours ago
- Politics
- The Hill
In fight with Columbia, Trump seeks ‘death sentence'
In President Trump's war with higher education, Columbia University just became the first to face the nuclear option. While other schools have also faced devastating funding cuts and new investigations from multiple federal agencies under Trump, the Education Department is now calling for Columbia to lose its accreditation, endangering its access to the entire federal student loan system. Republicans are cheering Trump on, but for Columbia, which his administration accuses of violating Title VI antidiscrimination laws, the threat is existential. 'It's often called, colloquially, in higher education, a death sentence, because very few institutions could continue to enroll students, especially lower- and middle-income students, without having those students have the ability to borrow or get grants to go to those schools,' said Jon Fansmith, senior vice president of government relations and national engagement at the American Council on Education. The college accreditation process is typically one of the most mundane aspects of higher education, involving a federally approved nonpartisan accreditor evaluating every aspect of an institution, from class selections to admission processes. But the accreditor determines if a school is allowed to have access to student aid, including federal loans and Pell Grants. Columbia costs $71,000 a year for tuition and fees without financial aid, and that doesn't include room and board. The school notes that 24 percent of its first-year students have Pell Grants. Without access to aid, Columbia would be inaccessible to most students in the country. Experts doubt that the accreditor in question, the Middle States Commission on Higher Education, will summarily nix Columbia's status. 'It is extraordinary for the Department of Education to do something like that, but I also recognize that Middle States is a very serious and professional entity,' said Raymond Brescia, associate dean for research and intellectual life at Albany Law School. 'I am confident that Middle States will take that concern seriously […] if Middle States determines that there is a concern here, then they will work with Columbia to rectify any issues,' he added. Typically, the Education Department will work with schools to try to correct specific issues before escalating the situation, but the Trump administration and other conservatives contend Columbia has had plenty of time to fix its alleged inaction on antisemitism. 'The question of 'Gosh, is this too soon?' I mean, how much longer do we need to wait? What other example of damage or harassment do we need to see before we can tell a university that it needs to comply with the law?' asked Jonathan Butcher, the Will Skillman senior research fellow in education policy at the Heritage Foundation. The very fight will cost Columbia time and money, even if it is ultimately victorious. The school said it is 'aware of the concerns' the Education Department brought to its accreditor 'and we have addressed those concerns directly with Middle States.' 'Columbia is deeply committed to combating antisemitism on our campus. We take this issue seriously and are continuing to work with the federal government to address it,' a spokesperson for the university added. Columbia and the Trump administration have been engaged in negotiations for months after the federal government pulled $400 million from the university, saying it had failed to adequately confront campus antisemitism. Instead of fighting like fellow Ivy League member Harvard University, Columbia agreed to many of the demands from the Trump administration, such as changing its disciplinary policies, but the capitulation only led to more funding being pulled. In recent weeks, friendlier tones were struck after the Trump administration praised Columbia for swiftly shutting down a pro-Palestinian protest at the school's library. Nevertheless, Education Secretary Linda McMahon said this week that Columbia has failed to meet its Title VI obligations. 'After Hamas' October 7, 2023, terror attack on Israel, Columbia University's leadership acted with deliberate indifference towards the harassment of Jewish students on its campus. This is not only immoral, but also unlawful. Accreditors have an enormous public responsibility as gatekeepers of federal student aid,' McMahon said. 'Just as the Department of Education has an obligation to uphold federal antidiscrimination law, university accreditors have an obligation to ensure member institutions abide by their standards,' she added. 'We look forward to the Commission keeping the Department fully informed of actions taken to ensure Columbia's compliance with accreditation standards including compliance with federal civil rights laws.' Education experts suspect Columbia will not be the last to see its accreditation threatened. The president has taken away billions of dollars from universities, threatened to revoke schools' tax-exempt status and tried to rescind Harvard's ability to admit and enroll foreign students, along with launching numerous civil rights and Title IX investigations against colleges across the country. And considering Trump was willing to take this particular step against a university that has been cooperating with his administration, it seems like it could be only a matter of time before Harvard, which has launched two lawsuits against the federal government, will be next. 'The writings on the wall, right? Why would he stop at Columbia? The goal here is to control higher education, because they think that higher education is a threat to their authoritarian rule,' said Todd Wolfson, national president of American Association of University Professors. 'I think the most important point is the people who are getting hurt here are our students and our families across this country. They are the collateral damage here,' he added. But some highlight another target in this action: accreditors themselves. On the campaign trail, Trump called accreditors his 'secret weapon' against higher education. In April, he signed an executive order to create more competition among accreditors and make it easier for schools to switch accreditation organizations, saying some accreditors have engaged in 'ideological overreach.' 'A big part of this is to intimidate the accreditors, to try to force the administration's viewpoints, which, again, aren't really supported by the law,' Fansmith said. One part is to 'scare the institution, come after the institution, but another part of this is to try to force the accreditors to get in line with the administration's policies. And that is in many ways, just as, if not more, troubling than what they're trying to do with these institutions,' he added.
Yahoo
23-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
The Republican Budget Bill Rips College Away From the Working Class
The budget bill that House Republicans passed early Thursday funds tax cuts for the rich by kneecapping Medicaid, slashing food stamps, and gutting green-energy investments—while also adding trillions to the deficit. But Republicans aren't content simply to take away health care and nutrition assistance from millions of Americans while accelerating climate change. The bill will also disproportionately hurt low-income students by making it harder for them to borrow and repay their loans and by tightening the rules for Pell Grants recipients. In doing so, it takes an axe to one of the few reliable ladders for working-class people seeking higher education. While there is some appetite for changes to the student loan program—total student debt is $1.6 trillion and growing, and more than five million borrowers are in default—they are not the ones that the Republican Congress has made. And no one was crying out for cuts to the Pell Grant program, a straightforward grant given to the lowest-income college students that don't have to be repaid. But these provisions in the bill are consistent with Republicans' broader attacks on higher education itself, which they consider to be corrupted by elitism and wokeism. Increasing the burden of student loans and tightening restrictions on Pell Grants, though, will only make it harder for working students to attend college. So much for the GOP's reverence for meritocracy. The changes to the Pell Grant program increase the number of credit hours that are required to qualify as a full-time student, from 12 to 15, and cut off aid entirely for students attending less than half time. For most college programs, that effectively requires one additional class per semester to get the maximum loan, around five classes total, and amounts to an almost $1,500 cut for students taking 12 credit hours who can't add to their courseload. It would also entirely cut off an estimated 20 percent of students currently receiving aid. 'It is a full-out assault on the ability of students—especially low-income students—to access and afford higher education,' Jon Fansmith, senior vice president for government relations and national engagement at the American Council on Education, told Inside Higher Ed last week. And it will only save the government an estimated $67 billion through the next decade, in a bill that the Congressional Budget Office estimates will add $3.1 trillion to the deficit over that time period. Advocates have said that the requirements are likely to hit the hardest for students who need to work or take care of a child while in college. 'It just completely ignores the reality that the majority of these students are not able to take five courses because they're also juggling the realities of life … working multiple part time jobs just to get by,' said Aissa Canchola Banez, the policy director at the Student Borrower Protection Center, a nonprofit that wants to eliminate student debt. The 50-year-old Pell Grant program was designed to enable the poorest students to attend school by providing them with tuition assistance they didn't have to pay back. Today, most recipients come from families making less than $60,000 a year. Overall, the value of the amount provided has diminished over the years because the small increases lawmakers have made haven't kept up with inflation, not to mention the much-faster rising costs of college. It once covered almost three-fourths of tuition, and now only covers a little over a quarter. As Pell Grants have decreased in value, students in need have relied more on student loans, both those provided by the government and by private lenders. Student debt has more than doubled in this century, as more students have gone to college and college costs have soared. Defaults rose over that time period as well. Borrowers have already been struggling to pay back those loans, especially those who borrowed but didn't finish to receive degrees, and the programs meant to help those in over their head weren't working as designed. Former President Joe Biden forgave a record number of student loans, largely by removing administrative barriers to forgiveness under existing laws. But Biden's biggest effort was blocked by the Supreme Court. Advocates have rallied around free college tuition at state universities and community colleges and increased aid like Pell Grants to help tackle the student loan crisis and the college affordability crisis. But the fight over student loans has helped make higher education funding more generally a target for the right. Republicans used the student loan crisis as a justification for these cuts. 'Our current student loan system is broken and has left students holding over $1.6 trillion in federal student loan debt, with taxpayers estimated to lose hundreds of billions of dollars on loans disbursed over the next decade,' GOP Rep. Tim Walberg of Michigan said in a statement after the House Education and Workforce Committee passed the education cuts, adding that the bill 'would save taxpayers over $350 billion' and 'bring much-needed reform' of student loans. It's part and parcel with Republicans' wholesale assault on higher education. The Trump administration has gone directly after many elite colleges and universities over their DEI policies and students' pro-Palestinian protests. This bill will extend the fight to the state and community colleges that educate the vast majority of students in the U.S., particularly those from low-income and working-class families. Other efforts to cut government spending on higher education will also impede these institutions' ability to step in and provide help to the students who need it who can no longer count on Pell Grants to help cover their costs. Tying colleges and universities to the culture wars has helped stoke anti-elitism among the right. Republican voters are worried about the values colleges and universities teach and think these institutions hold too much sway over American culture, moving it too far left. This is especially true of older voters who presumably see their grandchildren in college and don't know what to make of the generational gaps they see in political thinking. It's led them to question not only what universities are teaching, but whether they hold value for society at all. There are criticisms of higher education that are more than fair. The cost of college has gotten too far out of reach for many Americans, and for those who must borrow and struggle to earn a degree, their eventual earnings are often offset by unmanageable debt. The rise in student debt has also led many policymakers to question whether too many professional fields require unnecessary credentials. The push for high school students to go to college has been accompanied by a decline in apprenticeship programs and other alternative pathways into careers that provide high-earning opportunities in blue-collar work. As the daughter of the plumber, I'm sympathetic to arguments that not everyone needs to go to college for a good, well-paying career. But that message seems most aimed at low-income students in poor communities, those who might benefit most from college and can afford it the least. Earlier in my career, I held a second job as a private tutor for SAT prep on Connecticut's Gold Coast, and those parents and students were all scrambling to get into the best colleges possible, never once doubting the value or their ability to afford it. I never once heard someone suggest they forgo college for a blue-collar career. Abandoning the idea that education can be an engine for social mobility would change the shape of the United States. And it's become clear that funding for colleges has now simply become a wedge in the ongoing culture wars and battle for voters, as college graduates of all classes have migrated to the Democratic Party and non-college graduates are wooed by the MAGA Republicans' faux populism. Needless to say, the cuts in the GOP bill were authored by congressmembers who not only attended college, but in many cases went to Ivy League schools and hold advanced degrees. The bill still has to pass the Senate, where the Republican majority is also slim, and GOP senators including Rand Paul of Kentucky and Josh Hawley of Missouri have objected to some provisions. Whatever happens in the upper chamber, the Republican Party has shown us that it plans to use the worries of the working-class to dismantle any government attempt to help them, even in the smallest ways.
Yahoo
17-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
iPhones and GPS owe their existence to US government-funded research. What's at stake with Trump cuts to university funding
Imagine a world without the internet, or GPS, MRNA vaccines or the touchscreen on your iPhone. The science and technology that have become integral to our daily lives may never have existed, experts say, were it not for research funded by the federal government at American colleges and universities. But as President Trump's administration threatens to withhold billions of dollars in federal funding from colleges across the nation, the future of innovations like those – and America's global leadership in research and development – could be at stake. 'It's not hyperbole to say we could destroy a generation's worth of scientific progress in this administration,' Jon Fansmith, senior vice president of government relations at the American Council on Education, told CNN. 'The implications are huge for every American, regardless of your political viewpoints.' The Trump administration appears determined to bring America's most elite universities in lockstep with his political ideology by threatening to withhold research funding that has proven critical for the universities. Harvard University is locked in a standoff with the administration over $2 billion in multi-year grants and contracts for the school. The Ivy League school 'will not surrender its independence or its constitutional rights' by giving in to a bevy of demands from the administration in order to maintain its funding levels, the university's president, Alan Garber, has said. But other universities have struck a less defiant tone. Fansmith said some colleges can survive without federal funding – but not for long. 'When you get to hundreds of millions, billions of dollars – no institution, no matter how big their endowment, could sustain that kind of a loss over an extended period of time,' he said. Universities are like small cities with thousands of faculty members, students and researchers depending on the school to survive. But no two colleges are funded in the same way. Public universities often rely on revenue from tuition and donations as well as money from state and local governments to provide the bulk of their funding. Private universities are different. Because they don't receive financial support from the state, private schools lean heavily on donations. Take Harvard, for instance. Last year, philanthropy accounted for 45% of the school's revenue. But the majority of that money came from one source: the university's centuries-old endowment. Harvard, founded in 1636, is the oldest private university in the country and the school has received donations for nearly four centuries. Those gifts have helped the university amass an endowment worth $53 billion in 2024 – the largest of any university in the country. But that doesn't mean Harvard – or any other school with an endowment – can access and spend that money freely. Endowments are meant to literally fund a university forever. So there are rules limiting how much money a school can withdraw from its endowment each year. Last year, a $2.4 billion distribution from Harvard's endowment accounted for more than a third of the university's funding. But crucially, the university said 80% of that money was restricted for specific purposes, like financial aid, professorships and specific scholarships within certain schools. 'If I decide to endow a chair in the English department, the institution is legally not allowed to use that money for some other purpose,' Fansmith said, adding universities 'don't have the flexibility to just shift (donations) to other purposes if they think it's a more pressing need.' That's where the federal government – and its commitment to funding academic research – comes in. Johns Hopkins University 'receives more money than any other entity in the US' from the National Institutes of Health. Last year, Hopkins received $1 billion in funding from the agency. Harvard received $686 million in federal funding to conduct research in fiscal year 2024. But all of that could vanish overnight if the Trump administration follows through with its threats to withhold funds. Hopkins has already cut thousands of employees after dramatic cuts to USAID cost it $800 million in funding. But the federal government hasn't always played such a critical role in academic research. World War II fundamentally changed the relationship between the government and colleges and universities in the United States. Before the war, American industrialists like Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller created their own universities and financed research. But President Franklin Roosevelt believed scientific advancements would be crucial to winning the war. So, in 1941, he signed an executive order to create the Office of Scientific Research and Development. He tasked Vannevar Bush, the former dean of the MIT School of Engineering, with marshalling the country's top scientists and researchers to create more advanced weapons and technology. The OSRD funded research programs at universities across the nation – including the Manhattan Project – and the work of these scientists and researchers led to the creation of not only the atomic bomb but also radar and crucial advances in medicine and other military technology. The office was disbanded after the war, but the partnership between the federal government and colleges and universities helped place the nation at the forefront of global scientific innovation. And that relationship has endured for more than 70 years, until now. Today, agencies like the National Institutes of Health, Department of Defense, National Science Foundation and the Department of Energy are the largest funders of academic research at universities across the nation, said Toby Smith, senior vice president for government relations at the Association of American Universities. But the money doesn't go straight into Columbia or Harvard's bank accounts. Instead, the colleges and universities across the nation apply and compete for federal grants to conduct research, which Fansmith said enables the government to fund the best researchers at the lowest cost. Federal funding also helps cover the majority of costs for maintaining research facilities, a cost-sharing system that has been in place since Bush and the creation of the OSRD. In essence, Smith said, universities are akin to national laboratories. 'When you take money away from a Columbia or a Harvard or research or other institutions, you've just taken away funds from the best researchers who were judged by other scientists to do that research on behalf of the American people – in areas like cancer, Alzheimer's, pediatrics, diabetes, and other critical research areas,' Smith said. Many advances in science, he added, were discovered inadvertently by researchers who received federal grants. In fact, the annual 'Golden Goose' award recognizes these innovations that have had life-changing impacts. Thanks to funding from the National Science Foundation, economics researchers who were studying markets helped develop the chain model for kidney donations. In 2012, researchers Alvin Roth and Lloyd Shapley shared the Nobel Prize for economics. Scientists studying rats at Duke University, funded by the NIH, uncovered a breakthrough that led to the practice of 'infant massage' and forever changed neonatal care for premature infants. It has saved countless lives. That is what's at stake, Smith said, if the US were to halt its federal funding to colleges and universities. 'At the end of the day, (the US) won't have that knowledge,' he said. 'Other countries will overtake us in science and resulting technology, if we don't recognize and protect the unique system that we have in place.' And ultimately, he said, the American people will lose.
CNN
17-04-2025
- Politics
- CNN
Iphones and GPS wouldn't exist without research funded by the US government. What's at stake in Trump cuts to university funding
Imagine a world without the internet, or GPS, MRNA vaccines or the touchscreen on your iPhone. The science and technology that have become integral to our daily lives may never have existed, experts say, were it not for research funded by the federal government at American colleges and universities. But as President Trump's administration threatens to withhold billions of dollars in federal funding from colleges across the nation, the future of innovations like those – and America's global leadership in research and development – could be at stake. 'It's not hyperbole to say we could destroy a generation's worth of scientific progress in this administration,' Jon Fansmith, senior vice president of government relations at the American Council on Education, told CNN. 'The implications are huge for every American, regardless of your political viewpoints.' The Trump administration appears determined to bring America's most elite universities in lockstep with his political ideology by threatening to withhold research funding that has proven critical for the universities. Harvard University is locked in a standoff with the administration over $2 billion in multi-year grants and contracts for the school. The Ivy League school 'will not surrender its independence or its constitutional rights' by giving in to a bevy of demands from the administration in order to maintain its funding levels, the university's president, Alan Garber, has said. But other universities have struck a less defiant tone. Fansmith said some colleges can survive without federal funding – but not for long. 'When you get to hundreds of millions, billions of dollars – no institution, no matter how big their endowment, could sustain that kind of a loss over an extended period of time,' he said. Universities are like small cities with thousands of faculty members, students and researchers depending on the school to survive. But no two colleges are funded in the same way. Public universities often rely on revenue from tuition and donations as well as money from state and local governments to provide the bulk of their funding. Private universities are different. Because they don't receive financial support from the state, private schools lean heavily on donations. Take Harvard, for instance. Last year, philanthropy accounted for 45% of the school's revenue. But the majority of that money came from one source: the university's centuries-old endowment. Harvard, founded in 1636, is the oldest private university in the country and the school has received donations for nearly four centuries. Those gifts have helped the university amass an endowment worth $53 billion in 2024 – the largest of any university in the country. But that doesn't mean Harvard – or any other school with an endowment – can access and spend that money freely. Endowments are meant to literally fund a university forever. So there are rules limiting how much money a school can withdraw from its endowment each year. Last year, a $2.4 billion distribution from Harvard's endowment accounted for more than a third of the university's funding. But crucially, the university said 80% of that money was restricted for specific purposes, like financial aid, professorships and specific scholarships within certain schools. 'If I decide to endow a chair in the English department, the institution is legally not allowed to use that money for some other purpose,' Fansmith said, adding universities 'don't have the flexibility to just shift (donations) to other purposes if they think it's a more pressing need.' That's where the federal government – and its commitment to funding academic research – comes in. Johns Hopkins University 'receives more money than any other entity in the US' from the National Institutes of Health. Last year, Hopkins received $1 billion in funding from the agency. Harvard received $686 million in federal funding to conduct research in fiscal year 2024. But all of that could vanish overnight if the Trump administration follows through with its threats to withhold funds. Hopkins has already cut thousands of employees after dramatic cuts to USAID cost it $800 million in funding. But the federal government hasn't always played such a critical role in academic research. World War II fundamentally changed the relationship between the government and colleges and universities in the United States. Before the war, American industrialists like Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller created their own universities and financed research. But President Franklin Roosevelt believed scientific advancements would be crucial to winning the war. So, in 1941, he signed an executive order to create the Office of Scientific Research and Development. He tasked Vannevar Bush, the former dean of the MIT School of Engineering, with marshalling the country's top scientists and researchers to create more advanced weapons and technology. The OSRD funded research programs at universities across the nation – including the Manhattan Project – and the work of these scientists and researchers led to the creation of not only the atomic bomb but also radar and crucial advances in medicine and other military technology. The office was disbanded after the war, but the partnership between the federal government and colleges and universities helped place the nation at the forefront of global scientific innovation. And that relationship has endured for more than 70 years, until now. Today, agencies like the National Institutes of Health, Department of Defense, National Science Foundation and the Department of Energy are the largest funders of academic research at universities across the nation, said Toby Smith, senior vice president for government relations at the Association of American Universities. But the money doesn't go straight into Columbia or Harvard's bank accounts. Instead, the colleges and universities across the nation apply and compete for federal grants to conduct research, which Fansmith said enables the government to fund the best researchers at the lowest cost. Federal funding also helps cover the majority of costs for maintaining research facilities, a cost-sharing system that has been in place since Bush and the creation of the OSRD. In essence, Smith said, universities are akin to national laboratories. 'When you take money away from a Columbia or a Harvard or research or other institutions, you've just taken away funds from the best researchers who were judged by other scientists to do that research on behalf of the American people – in areas like cancer, Alzheimer's, pediatrics, diabetes, and other critical research areas,' Smith said. Many advances in science, he added, were discovered inadvertently by researchers who received federal grants. In fact, the annual 'Golden Goose' award recognizes these innovations that have had life-changing impacts. Thanks to funding from the National Science Foundation, economics researchers who were studying markets helped develop the chain model for kidney donations. In 2012, researchers Alvin Roth and Lloyd Shapley shared the Nobel Prize for economics. Scientists studying rats at Duke University, funded by the NIH, uncovered a breakthrough that led to the practice of 'infant massage' and forever changed neonatal care for premature infants. It has saved countless lives. That is what's at stake, Smith said, if the US were to halt its federal funding to colleges and universities. 'At the end of the day, (the US) won't have that knowledge,' he said. 'Other countries will overtake us in science and resulting technology, if we don't recognize and protect the unique system that we have in place.' And ultimately, he said, the American people will lose.
CNN
17-04-2025
- Politics
- CNN
Iphones and GPS wouldn't exist without research funded by the US government. What's at stake in Trump cuts to university funding
Imagine a world without the internet, or GPS, MRNA vaccines or the touchscreen on your iPhone. The science and technology that have become integral to our daily lives may never have existed, experts say, were it not for research funded by the federal government at American colleges and universities. But as President Trump's administration threatens to withhold billions of dollars in federal funding from colleges across the nation, the future of innovations like those – and America's global leadership in research and development – could be at stake. 'It's not hyperbole to say we could destroy a generation's worth of scientific progress in this administration,' Jon Fansmith, senior vice president of government relations at the American Council on Education, told CNN. 'The implications are huge for every American, regardless of your political viewpoints.' The Trump administration appears determined to bring America's most elite universities in lockstep with his political ideology by threatening to withhold research funding that has proven critical for the universities. Harvard University is locked in a standoff with the administration over $2 billion in multi-year grants and contracts for the school. The Ivy League school 'will not surrender its independence or its constitutional rights' by giving in to a bevy of demands from the administration in order to maintain its funding levels, the university's president, Alan Garber, has said. But other universities have struck a less defiant tone. Fansmith said some colleges can survive without federal funding – but not for long. 'When you get to hundreds of millions, billions of dollars – no institution, no matter how big their endowment, could sustain that kind of a loss over an extended period of time,' he said. Universities are like small cities with thousands of faculty members, students and researchers depending on the school to survive. But no two colleges are funded in the same way. Public universities often rely on revenue from tuition and donations as well as money from state and local governments to provide the bulk of their funding. Private universities are different. Because they don't receive financial support from the state, private schools lean heavily on donations. Take Harvard, for instance. Last year, philanthropy accounted for 45% of the school's revenue. But the majority of that money came from one source: the university's centuries-old endowment. Harvard, founded in 1636, is the oldest private university in the country and the school has received donations for nearly four centuries. Those gifts have helped the university amass an endowment worth $53 billion in 2024 – the largest of any university in the country. But that doesn't mean Harvard – or any other school with an endowment – can access and spend that money freely. Endowments are meant to literally fund a university forever. So there are rules limiting how much money a school can withdraw from its endowment each year. Last year, a $2.4 billion distribution from Harvard's endowment accounted for more than a third of the university's funding. But crucially, the university said 80% of that money was restricted for specific purposes, like financial aid, professorships and specific scholarships within certain schools. 'If I decide to endow a chair in the English department, the institution is legally not allowed to use that money for some other purpose,' Fansmith said, adding universities 'don't have the flexibility to just shift (donations) to other purposes if they think it's a more pressing need.' That's where the federal government – and its commitment to funding academic research – comes in. Johns Hopkins University 'receives more money than any other entity in the US' from the National Institutes of Health. Last year, Hopkins received $1 billion in funding from the agency. Harvard received $686 million in federal funding to conduct research in fiscal year 2024. But all of that could vanish overnight if the Trump administration follows through with its threats to withhold funds. Hopkins has already cut thousands of employees after dramatic cuts to USAID cost it $800 million in funding. But the federal government hasn't always played such a critical role in academic research. World War II fundamentally changed the relationship between the government and colleges and universities in the United States. Before the war, American industrialists like Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller created their own universities and financed research. But President Franklin Roosevelt believed scientific advancements would be crucial to winning the war. So, in 1941, he signed an executive order to create the Office of Scientific Research and Development. He tasked Vannevar Bush, the former dean of the MIT School of Engineering, with marshalling the country's top scientists and researchers to create more advanced weapons and technology. The OSRD funded research programs at universities across the nation – including the Manhattan Project – and the work of these scientists and researchers led to the creation of not only the atomic bomb but also radar and crucial advances in medicine and other military technology. The office was disbanded after the war, but the partnership between the federal government and colleges and universities helped place the nation at the forefront of global scientific innovation. And that relationship has endured for more than 70 years, until now. Today, agencies like the National Institutes of Health, Department of Defense, National Science Foundation and the Department of Energy are the largest funders of academic research at universities across the nation, said Toby Smith, senior vice president for government relations at the Association of American Universities. But the money doesn't go straight into Columbia or Harvard's bank accounts. Instead, the colleges and universities across the nation apply and compete for federal grants to conduct research, which Fansmith said enables the government to fund the best researchers at the lowest cost. Federal funding also helps cover the majority of costs for maintaining research facilities, a cost-sharing system that has been in place since Bush and the creation of the OSRD. In essence, Smith said, universities are akin to national laboratories. 'When you take money away from a Columbia or a Harvard or research or other institutions, you've just taken away funds from the best researchers who were judged by other scientists to do that research on behalf of the American people – in areas like cancer, Alzheimer's, pediatrics, diabetes, and other critical research areas,' Smith said. Many advances in science, he added, were discovered inadvertently by researchers who received federal grants. In fact, the annual 'Golden Goose' award recognizes these innovations that have had life-changing impacts. Thanks to funding from the National Science Foundation, economics researchers who were studying markets helped develop the chain model for kidney donations. In 2012, researchers Alvin Roth and Lloyd Shapley shared the Nobel Prize for economics. Scientists studying rats at Duke University, funded by the NIH, uncovered a breakthrough that led to the practice of 'infant massage' and forever changed neonatal care for premature infants. It has saved countless lives. That is what's at stake, Smith said, if the US were to halt its federal funding to colleges and universities. 'At the end of the day, (the US) won't have that knowledge,' he said. 'Other countries will overtake us in science and resulting technology, if we don't recognize and protect the unique system that we have in place.' And ultimately, he said, the American people will lose.
