At the STAT Summit in Boston, MIT President Sally Kornbluth and Holden Thorp, editor-in-chief of the Science family of journals, defended the American university research model against a new federal blueprint that prioritizes AI and industry over basic science. They warned that recent funding cuts and policy shifts are already hurting graduate education and could undermine future discoveries.
MIT enrolled nearly 500 fewer graduate students this fall, a 20% drop from 2024, after losing $100 million in federal research awards. Kornbluth said universities are being cautious on admissions because they don't want students to run out of funding mid-Ph.D. Across the country, schools have suspended or shrunk graduate programs amid 18 months of grant terminations and delays.
The administration has proposed moving hundreds of billions of research dollars from universities to industry, focusing on national priorities like advanced computing, quantum computers, and AI training. Kornbluth worries this will create a "serious drought" in the pipeline of curiosity-driven research that led to CRISPR, microRNA, and optogenetics. Thorp added that the U.S. was already losing its lead as the largest public funder of science, with China expected to surpass it within two to three years and now hosting nine of the top ten academic research institutions. He doubts the new push will reverse that trend.