By Kritika Agarwal
University leaders are sounding the alarm over how slowly the nation’s federal science agencies are spending congressionally approved research dollars. They are warning that, without the fast and timely release of those funds, the United States risks serious damage to the very foundations of its scientific research enterprise.
In a May 20 opinion essay in The Wall Street Journal, University of Kansas Chancellor and AAU Board Chair Doug Girod and Johns Hopkins University President and AAU Board Vice Chair Ron Daniels wrote that “the federal research engine has sputtered,” causing massive reductions in the nation’s support for fundamental or basic scientific research – the type of research that lays the groundwork and generates the new knowledge that fuels advancements in biotechnology and health research, telecommunications, and artificial intelligence – most of which is conducted by our nation’s universities. This, the leaders warned, threatens “America’s scientific primacy.”
Meanwhile, Massachusetts Institute of Technology President Sally Kornbluth released a video message on May 14 noting that shrinking federal awards have led to declines in research activity at MIT, hampering “one of the most influential and productive research communities in the world.”
Together, their messages underscore a stark reality: federal agencies’ failure to deliver promised resources to researchers is holding American science back.
Federal Grantmaking Has Slowed to a Trickle
In a normal year, once Congress approves the federal budget, agencies such as the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, and the Department of Energy Office of Science move relatively quickly to release funding opportunities, award new grants, and renew existing grants and contracts. Agencies award funds through competitive, merit-based processes to ensure that taxpayer dollars go toward funding the best and the most rigorous science.
This year, however, instead of releasing research dollars to labs and scientists who can quickly put the funds toward making groundbreaking discoveries and lifesaving medical advances, the agencies are dragging their feet.
In FY26, as of May 22, the NIH has awarded half as many new grants (-48%) compared to the historical average at this point in the year (based on FY17-24); as of May 25, the NSF has awarded even fewer new grants (-65%) than they typically do.[i]
If the agencies do not spend the funds Congress has approved for FY26 by September 30, 2026, the majority of the funds will go back to the U.S. Treasury.
There are many reasons behind the slow spend rate – from the protracted government shutdown during which no funds were released to staff shortages to holds currently placed on the funds by the administration’s Office of Management and Budget.
How Slow Agency Spending Affects University Research
As Girod and Daniels noted in The Wall Street Journal, faculty and students at both their universities “serve the public good” by conducting research that leads to “cancer therapies, treatments for cardiovascular disease, solutions for the farmers who feed the country, and other innovations that enrich Americans and improve their lives.”
But now, because of slowed federal spending and cuts to federal research, university research portfolios are experiencing massive contractions. According to Girod and Daniels, Johns Hopkins’ multiyear federal research portfolio declined by more than $500 million in 2025, while the University of Kansas has experienced “a year-over-year drop of $182 million” three quarters into FY26.
Something similar has also happened at MIT. “Compared to this time last year, MIT has experienced a decline in campus research activity funded by federal awards of more than 20%. Still more concerning is that our number of new federal research awards is also down more than 20%,” Kornbluth said in her video message.
Reduced U.S. Economic Competitiveness and Growth
As MIT explains in its new “Curiosity on a Mission” initiative, “The most important innovations almost always arise from basic research, sometimes from work completed decades before” – usually in university labs.
For example, MIT noted, “Today’s revolutionary immunotherapies grew from the study of how the immune system works, long before anyone imagined it as a source of cancer treatments. Wi-Fi emerged from basic research in the field of radio astronomy. GPS was a physics experiment that could not have been achieved without Einstein’s Theory of Relativity.”
In fact, behind virtually every industry fueling U.S. economic growth are curiosity-driven discoveries that emerged from university research. As Girod and Daniels wrote, “Free markets require a functioning pipeline of basic research. The biotechnology companies, semiconductor makers, pharmaceutical innovators and defense contractors that drive private-sector growth build products predicated on publicly funded scientific discoveries.”
The federal government is the largest supporter of basic research at universities, and without that funding, the United States stands to lose its economic competitive edge. As MIT noted, “Research that does not happen cannot be measured, but its absence is eventually felt in treatments that are not developed, in technologies that are not invented, and in industries that do not emerge.”
Shrinking Talent Pipeline
Funding gaps and delayed awards are forcing researchers to pause projects, close labs, or even leave the United States. Slowed federal funding means principal investigators (PIs) running labs are admitting fewer graduate students and, in some cases, even letting go of early-career researchers working in their labs.
At the moment, Girod and Daniels wrote, NIH “awards supporting our next-generation scientists training in the nation’s laboratories are down 75%.”
Kornbluth noted that, outside of a few programs, graduate enrollment declined by 20% across MIT year-over-year. “That means that, in total, outside of [the MIT Sloan School of Management], we could have about 500 fewer graduate students,” she noted, adding: “Which means we’ll have many fewer students advancing the work of MIT, and undergraduates will have fewer grad students as mentors in their research.”
This shrinking talent pipeline has long-term effects: A report released by MIT earlier this year found that MIT alumni “launched 30,200 active companies, employing roughly 4.6 million people, and generating roughly $1.9 trillion in annual revenues,” as of 2014. Fewer talented students and researchers at our nation’s leading research universities means fewer future founders, inventors, and job creators.
The Damage Is Already Done
Even if agencies suddenly accelerated the flow of research dollars – as they did last year toward the end of the fiscal year – much of the damage from the slow rate of grantmaking is already done. Universities have already delayed or canceled projects, scaled back hiring or let researchers go, and admitted fewer graduate students – decisions they can’t easily reverse with a later influx of funds.
Further, last year, agencies spent down their budgets by making larger grant payments to a smaller number of researchers. If the agencies do so again this year, fewer researchers – especially early-career researchers – will receive awards and be able to make scientific contributions.
As Kornbluth noted recently in an opinion essay in The Boston Globe, “In daily life, people may not feel the effects right away, or even in 10 years. But we will feel it. And when someone we love needs therapies that could have emerged but didn’t or when other countries now investing in science can launch new science-based industries or run their societies on vast resources of fusion energy or reap the benefits of quantum computing power or advanced medical breakthroughs, America will wish it sustained its leadership in scientific research here and now.”
Why Congress Needs to Step In
Contrary to popular belief, universities cannot simply turn to private investors or their endowments to make up for the slowed federal research funds. The fundamental research performed at universities, by its nature, is often too risky for industry to invest in as there is no guarantee that any resulting discoveries will directly benefit the company’s bottom-line as shareholders demand.
Meanwhile, new endowment taxes enacted last year have already strained universities such as MIT. Plus, universities were already spending more of their own funds on research than all other non-federal supporters combined before the new administration came into office. Many universities have used bridge funding to keep research labs open, but those resources are now also stretched thin.
It is time for Congress to use its oversight authority to press federal agencies to release the funds that Congress has approved. There are some signs that this is starting to happen – on May 21, at a congressional hearing, lawmakers pressed NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya about the agency’s slow spend rate – but Congress can and should do more to bring additional attention to this issue and to press agencies to spend their allocations.
As Girod and Daniels noted, “American universities hold their position at the frontier of global science because the federal government has historically made it possible.” To echo the presidents, it is past time to “Release the funds, restore normal grant timelines, and let the science proceed.”
[i] Data accessed from ScienceSpending.org on May 21.
Kritika Agarwal is assistant vice president for communications at AAU.