What’s New
As President Trump tries to slash spending across the federal government, many colleges are considering their own freezes and cuts as precautions.
The Details
Northwestern University’s president, provost, and chief financial officer said they were cutting nonpersonnel expenses for this fiscal year by 10 percent, scaling back hiring, and reviewing any spending of more than $25,000.
“While we are doing all we can to advocate for and protect our community, we feel it is necessary to take these steps until further notice to help ensure Northwestern is best positioned to navigate this period of uncertainty without permanent damage to our operations or mission,” administrators wrote in an email to the campus.
On Friday, North Carolina State University announced a hiring freeze “until further notice” and urged colleges and units “to be conservative” with spending.
Washington State University officials said they would also consider hiring freezes, travel freezes, and permanent budget cuts. The Board of Regents held a special meeting Monday to discuss “federal funding challenges” and plans for the 2026 fiscal year budget.
“We know this is challenging, and acknowledge the anxiety some of you may feel,” Washington State’s provost wrote in an email to faculty and staff.
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology told faculty members that officials are preparing for a loss of more than $100 million in federal funding, WGBH reported.
The plan includes a scenario where the 15-percent cap on indirect costs for grants from the National Institutes of Health, as the Trump administration has proposed, becomes permanent. Indirect costs are provided in addition to grant funding to support administrative and maintenance expenses associated with operating labs.
Boston University is tightening its approvals for new positions and considering paring back off-site events and discretionary spending, according to WGBH.
The Backdrop
Many of the Trump administration’s most-drastic measures, such as pausing the flow of billions in federal funding and capping indirect costs for NIH grants, have been temporarily blocked by courts.
But some federal rollbacks are already affecting colleges. Two tribal colleges — Haskell Indian Nations University, in Kansas, and Southwestern Indian Polytechnic Institute, in New Mexico — are operated by the U.S. Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Indian Education and therefore are subject to Trump’s mass layoffs of probationary federal employees. Haskell is losing around 25 to 30 percent of its faculty and staff, The Lawrence Times reported.
Turmoil at the United States Agency for International Development, or USAID, has imperiled some 17 labs at land-grant universities that research farming, seeds, and agricultural technology abroad, Reuters reported. Michigan State University will keep its lab staffed for now in hopes that funding will be restored, while the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign will shutter its Soybean Innovation Lab in April, according to Reuters.
On Friday, the University of St. Thomas said it had lost a $6.3-million grant that supported 185 scholarships for a special-education master’s program. According to the university, the money was targeted under Trump’s efforts to eradicate diversity, equity, and inclusion programs. Administrators are hoping to appeal the decision, and will continue to pay for the scholarships for now, Minnesota Public Radio reported.
The Education Department announced Thursday that it had canceled another $350 million in what officials called “woke spending.” The decision affected several regional laboratories that formed partnerships with policymakers and educators to study best practices, as well as “equity-assistance centers” that provided support and training to state and local education agencies and school boards.
What to Watch For
Another looming possibility is a prolonged shutdown of the federal government: Congress has a March 14 deadline to finalize its budget for the 2025 fiscal year.
On Friday, the American Council on Education said it’s concerned about congressional proposals to slash $1.5 trillion from federal spending, increase an existing tax on some colleges’ endowments, and impose a risk-share model that would financially penalize institutions based on former students’ ability to repay their loans.
