We need to be sending more federal research dollars to more people in more places. Instead, the government is doing the opposite.
A memorial for the loss of funding for research and public health programs is placed in front of the National Institutes of Health on May 10, 2025.
(Kayla Bartkowski / Getty Images)
It has been a tumultuous few months for the National Institutes of Health (NIH)—a federal agency that funds billions of dollars in health-related research. From the very beginning of the second Trump administration, the ability of the NIH to support research has been severely hampered. Study sections (meetings where scientists decide which grants warrant funding) were initially postponed or canceled outright, throwing into jeopardy the fate of hundreds of proposals. Even after study sections resumed, a wave of grant terminations followed. Whether targeted towards specific universities like Columbia or because the topics of study conflicted with the President’s “DEI” order, or for no stated reason at all, many affected researchers received orders requiring them to immediately cease work on their research projects. At the same time, NIH proposed slashing the indirect rate universities receive on grants to 15 percent—a level that would decimate university budgets (current rates average around 30 percent, but can range up to 50–60 percent). All these moves are now tied up in litigation.
Biomedical and public health research in the United States now finds itself in an existential moment. The government’s proposed changes, if allowed to take place, will absolutely decimate not just the nation’s but the world’s ability to study disease, therapeutics, and health outcomes. Other federal agencies that fund scientific research, such as the National Science Foundation and the Department of Energy, are enduring similar struggles. Faced with numerous threats to their research funding, universities are now engaged in a public campaign to educate people about the value of research. For instance, on the day that Harvard announced that it would not comply with the administration’s latest demands, it unveiled a new website that showcased different research projects across the institution.
Health research is funded by the American public for the public good. It doesn’t deliver immediate profits; scientists use public funding to investigate questions of inquiry that will broadly benefit the public. For instance, beginning in the 1990s, the Department of Veterans Affairs and the NIH funded studies into the poisonous venom of a reptile called the gila monster. The research aimed to look into ways to use compounds in the venom to potentially lower blood sugar in humans. Decades later, this research would lead to the development of GLP1 drugs such as Ozempic and Wegovy. NIH-funded research has helped develop better screening practices, treatments, and clinical guidelines for a wide variety of cancers, which has broadly led to earlier detection, prognosis, and therefore, better survival. Research takes time and is costly, and without public intervention, few will fund it.
Today, American universities are research powerhouses because of public investment. But it wasn’t always like this; before the late 1800s, American universities broadly served to educate students, more than serve as research institutions. Across the globe, science was broadly the work of people who came from wealth or a select few funded by prestigious national academies like the Royal Society in England or the National Academies in France. Here at home, Ben Franklin conducted many experiments and studies of his own after coming into wealth as a publisher. In short, while elements of science were publicly funded, the ability to conduct science remained out of reach to the vast majority of people.
After World War II, facing competition from the Soviet Union, the US government invested billions of dollars into American universities to conduct research. This amount of investment has steadily increased over the past 60 years, rising from just over $10 billion in 1960 to $60 billion in 2023. The money allowed research universities to grow, towns and cities across the country to expand, and thousands of people to start careers in biomedical science. People across the country and the world flock to US universities with the hopes of conducting innovative, cutting-edge research of their own. As a result, the American research university is a major driver of economic growth across the nation.
United for Medical Research, an advocacy organization, estimated that in 2024, for every dollar the public invested in research, $2.56 was produced. Research funding helps support 400,000 jobs across the country. These economic impacts go beyond paying the salaries of researchers; they support local businesses—both in purchasing supplies for research and through any spending researchers may do. These funds pay for facilities and administrative staff, and they help support new construction of research facilities, among many other things.
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The government also plays a big role in kick-starting scientific career opportunities. For instance, the NIH offers a F31 award to support doctoral students conducting biomedical research for their dissertation projects and K awards to early-career health researchers. These grants are meant to advance training and development as scientists. The NIH also funds multiple Centers for Biomedical Research Excellence across the country, known as COBREs. These centers are awarded to universities in states with less NIH funding from other mechanisms. COBREs use NIH funding to award smaller grants to individual scientists, allowing them to gain critical experience before pursuing bigger grants.
Recognizing that minorities are underrepresented amongst NIH recipients, the NIH introduced mechanisms to provide funding for people in underrepresented groups. These include people from racial and ethnic minorities that are underrepresented (Black, Latine, Indigenous people, Pacific Islanders, etc.) but also for people of other marginalized experiences—being from a rural area, having parents who didn’t go to college, having been homeless or in foster care, having received Pell Grants, SNAP or WIC, being eligible for the free lunch program. These grants have been terminated by the current administration.
Diversity in scientific research is important because it fuels innovation. Including unique perspectives from people of different cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds and with varied lived experience improves capacity for problem solving—a fundamental skill for conducting rigorous research. Diverse teams also promote more inclusive research that serves the public’s health needs more broadly and within specific communities facing particular health challenges.
Despite the expansion of science in the US over the past few decades and NIH’s efforts to diversify the pool of scientists, science and academia remain largely inaccessible to working-class people. Tenure-track professors are over 25 times more likely to have a parent with a PhD than the general population. Research that compared people who got doctorate degrees from the same institution found that those who did not have a parent with a graduate degree were 13 percent less likely to end up tenured at a R1 institution (universities classified as having very high research activity) compared to their classmates who had a parent with a graduate degree.
There is also the misconception that people working on NIH-supported research are highly compensated, overpaid, or pursuing science for financial gain. In fact, scientific research runs on an army of research assistants and graduate students. These researchers can make as little as $43,000 a year in jobs that typically require a college degree, which often means taking on student debt. Jobs in academia also pay substantially less than private industry; according to data released by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the median salary for life science researchers (tenured and not) is $80,000, while in industry it is $96,000. It is this lower pay that is driving more scientists to leave academia and enter the private sector—something that is sure to accelerate with the advent of cuts to federal funding. This reality has spurred on unionization efforts across the country for graduate students and postdocs, including at the NIH.
It’s true—we need to reform how we fund science, to ensure that people from working class, marginalized backgrounds can get into the field and not just survive but thrive. The government needs to support young scientists so that they aren’t worried about rent or groceries as they receive their training. Unionization efforts need to be expanded at universities across the country to ensure better pay and working conditions. The NIH, for its part, can continue to raise the minimum salary levels for postdocs and graduate students (currently $61,000 and $28,000, respectively). The NIH raised these amounts last year at the behest of an advisory group—but with all the recent chaos, it is questionable whether this progress will continue. And of course, diversity supplements need to be revived.
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At the end of the day, for more people to get into science and make a living out of it, the government needs to increase the amount it spends on research. Instead, the opposite is happening, and communities across the country will face economic devastation. According to a recent study, even a 25 percent cut to research funding will result in an impact similar to that of the 2008 recession.
It may be easy to think that this is only impacting a handful of elite universities, but in reality, many public institutions across the country will be impacted, in all states, red and blue. Flagship state institutions are already facing budget pressures—West Virginia University, for instance, laid off 143 faculty members and cut dozens of programs in response to a budget shortfall in 2023. With a lack of federal funding, similar cuts at other universities can be expected; what this does is limit who can participate in science. Elite universities will marshal their alumni and investments in defense, while public institutions will shrink, limiting the options for working-class students who want to pursue science at an in-state institution. These actions will only ensure that the top labs, equipment, and people remain at elite universities.
America does not have to choose between the status quo of the past and the disaster and chaos of the present. There is a way forward that will advance the country and open the doors of science to thousands, but it’s up to public officials to pursue it.
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