Colleges and universities nationwide are bracing for potential federal funding cuts and policy changes under the Trump administration. In Massachusetts, at least two schools are tightening their budgets.
On Thursday evening, a briefing presented to MIT faculty showed administrators are anticipating a loss of more than $100 million in federal funding. The faculty briefing obtained by GBH News details so-called “stress scenarios,” including the National Institutes of Health making permanent its cap on payments to schools for overhead costs or a new endowment tax on wealthy schools.
MIT said on Friday it was instituting a general hiring freeze on all non-faculty positions until further notice.
“Faculty will not be impacted by this freeze, and there is a process for exceptions for essential personnel,” said spokesperson Kimberly Allen.
Meanwhile, Boston University is requiring approval for all new full- and part-time hires.
“We know our faculty and staff will navigate the challenges and continue to provide a high-quality education to our students when this takes effect later this month,” BU spokesperson Colin Riley said in an email.
The university is also considering limiting off-site events, meetings and discretionary spending.
Federal funding is a large part of research universities’ budgets , so administrators across the country are talking behind closed doors about their financial stability.
Higher education economist Robert Kelchen at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville said those discussions and rumors of further cuts are undermining morale and contributing to burnout.
“All the uncertainty with the Trump administration’s actions and the potential for substantial budget cuts means that colleges are considering doing things like hiring freezes and budget cuts in order to make sure they stay financially stable through this process,” Kelchen said. “If some grants are taken away and other grants see a reduction in indirect cost reimbursement, that money has to come from somewhere — and it’s difficult to take that money out of the classroom.”
Kelchen said colleges are looking for ways to slow spending while they wait to see what happens in Washington and in the courts.
Earlier this week, Kara Freeman, president and CEO of the National Association of College and University Business Officers, said in a statement the Trump administration’s decision to “gut and cap federal support for life-changing research” will deteriorate the relationship between colleges and the federal government.
“While this retrenchment may seem like a good deal for taxpayers, the truth is that without a federal partner to share some of the costs of innovation, ground-breaking research, and life-changing medical advances, these costs will fall directly and indirectly on current students or bring this vital work to a halt,” Freeman said.
