This isn’t terribly surprising, given the broader budgetary situation at American universities, particularly in the sciences and biomedical research specifically. I’ve heard from faculty and graduate students at a number of schools around the country. Many programs are dramatically reducing the number of offers being made for PhD programs. One prestigious school of medicine cut the number of PhD students it’s admitting for next year by 50%. At another program, PhD students are being graduated on an expedited basis, sooner and with less work produced than would normally be allowed. The logic is simple. The program doesn’t think they’re going to have the money to allow these students to finish. I’ve heard multiple examples of offers being turned down to attend programs in other countries. Meanwhile and unsurprisingly, foreign students are turning down offers to study in the United States.
As I said, none of this is really surprising given what else we know is happening. But it’s worth illustrating how the scientific training pipeline is already being massively impacted only a few months into the White House’s war on American scientific research.
I noted in the post below about Harvard that Harvard is one of the very few institutions with the resources to hold on through a lengthy legal battle. They can batten down the financial hatches to whether their storm. Most universities can’t do anything like that. And what is important to note here is that none of the examples I’m describing are from Harvard or Columbia or Brown or any of the other universities which have been specifically targeted. They’re reacting to the general cuts to federally backed scientific research, NIH, NSF etc.
