Find all Leading Research Universities Reports below. The Leading Research Universities report is a free newsletter covering events in higher education and research.
On January 27, the Department of Energy announced that, because of the signing of the FY26 Energy-Water spending bill into law, “the Policy Flashes related to adjusting indirect rates … are no longer in effect.” The bill requires DOE to apply negotiated indirect cost rates as they were applied in FY24.
Costs of Research (F&A Costs) | Leading Research Universities Report | Research Administration & Regulation
In 2025, hundreds of lawsuits were filed against the Trump administration challenging policies that tested the limits of executive power, many of which directly or indirectly affect the nation’s higher education system and the scientific research enterprise, including colleges and universities’ ability to: enroll students; conduct research vital to our nation’s health, security, and economy; and manage their faculty, staff, and curriculum.
On January 20, AAU and 22 other higher education organizations (led by the American Council on Education) submitted a friend-of-the-court brief urging the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to uphold a lower court’s decision to block President Trump’s effort to prevent Harvard University from enrolling international students.
On Thursday night, the House passed the final four spending bills for FY26: Defense, Labor-HHS-Education, Transportation-HUD, and Homeland Security. The four bills will now be bundled together with the FY26 Financial Services General Government and National Security-State bills, which the House passed last week, into a six-bill minibus that will be sent over to the Senate.
A new paper released by Attain Partners and commissioned by AAU and COGR shows that universities on average are reimbursed less by the federal government for the indirect research costs they incur than private industry contractors and federal laboratories. The report also shows that universities use their own institutional funds to subsidize a significant portion of the costs involved in performing research on behalf of the American people.
On Thursday, January 15, the Senate voted 82-15 to send legislation rejecting the president’s deep proposed cuts to science to his desk for a signature.
A new report by researchers at the Philadelphia Federal Reserve finds that new student loan limits imposed by Congress will lead to approximately one in eight graduate students struggling to secure sufficient educational loans from the private sector beginning in the upcoming academic year.
A new report reaffirms the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) programs as critical to science, technology, and security in the United States and urges Congress to reinstate them after allowing them to expire last year.
On December 8, the United States House of Representatives voted 397-28 to reject deep proposed cuts to some of the nation’s premier science agencies, including the National Science Foundation, NASA, and the Department of Energy Office of Science.
The latest release of the Higher Education Research and Development (HERD) Survey by the National Science Foundation shows that colleges and universities significantly increased their own support for groundbreaking research and development (R&D) in FY24.