Doctor of Philosophy programs are constricting across the U.S. as the federal government slashes institutional research funding, Nature reported Oct. 21.
The last seven months have seen sweeping changes in federal research funding, with the Trump administration freezing billions of dollars in multiyear grants and contracts at universities, including Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass. The university’s medical school, based in Boston, is digging into emergency funds to keep research and training programs afloat for the next fiscal year.
However, Harvard administrators recently instructed the medical school to cut research spending by at least 20% by the end of this fiscal year. The university reportedly is reducing PhD slots across dozens of departments, including a 75% decrease in spots in the organismic and evolutionary biology department’s PhD program, according to the Harvard Crimson, a student newspaper.
It is not just Harvard. Schools across the country are shrinking their PhD programs for the 2026-27 admissions year. In a survey sent to about 80 biology programs, 40 of the 45 that responded said they have reduced their PhD class sizes or plan to do so, according to Nature.
Other departments are pausing admissions altogether.
“Fewer graduate students mean less science will be produced,” Donna Ginther, PhD, an economist at the University of Kansas in Lawrence, told Nature. “If this persists for a number of years, the scientific workforce will shrink.”
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