As Trump Goes After Universities, Students Are Now on the Chopping Block

Politics|As Trump Goes After Universities, Students Are Now on the Chopping Block

In the early weeks of the Trump administration’s push to slash funding that colleges and universities rely on, grants and contracts had been cut and, in a few cases, researchers had been laid off.

In recent days, the fiscal pain has come to students.

At the University of Pennsylvania, administrators have asked departments in the School of Arts & Sciences, the university’s largest school, to cut incoming Ph.D. students. In some cases, that meant reneging on informal offers, according to Wendy Roth, a professor of sociology.

Her department had to decide which of the students would be “unaccepted.” Dr. Roth, chair of graduate education, was chosen to explain those decisions to them.

“Two of them, I would say, were extremely upset. One person was in tears,” she said. “It’s just the most terrible thing to get that kind of news when your plans are made.”

Since taking office, the Trump administration has issued orders that threaten to broadly undercut the financial foundation of university based research, including deep reductions in overhead cost reimbursements through the National Institutes of Health. Court challenges have paused some of the cuts, but universities are bracing for uncertainty. The University of Pennsylvania could face a $250 million hit in N.I.H. funding alone.

Members of the administration have cast the cuts as a way to reduce wasteful government spending, sometimes in political terms. Last month, Katie Miller, who is working with Elon Musk’s team to trim federal spending, said the cuts would end “liberal D.E.I. deans’ slush fund.”