Imagine a world without the internet, GPS, RNA vaccines, or touch-responsive screens on iPhones; these innovations and discoveries that have become an integral part of our daily lives would not have been achieved without federally funded research at American colleges and universities.
With the Trump administration's threat to withhold billions of dollars in federal funding from colleges across the country, the future of such innovations and America's global leadership in research and development is at stake.
John F. Smith, the senior vice president for government relations at the American Council on Education, told CNN, "We are destroying an entire generation of scientific progress under this administration; the repercussions will be enormous for every American, regardless of their political views."
The White House freezes $2.2 billion in aid to Harvard University over a dispute about antisemitism.
Trump intends to make the top American universities align with his ideology by threatening to cut funding for university research, but Harvard University has clashed with the White House over grants and multi-year contracts worth $2 billion, with university president Alan Garber stating that the university "will not compromise its independence or constitutional rights" by yielding to the administration's demands to maintain its funding levels, though other universities have adopted a less confrontational tone.
Smith said that some colleges can survive without federal funding, but not for long, "We are talking about billions of dollars; no institution, no matter how large its endowment, can sustain that kind of loss for long."
Funding Structure
Public universities rely on tuition revenue and donations, along with funding from state and local governments, to provide the bulk of their funding.
Private universities are different because they do not receive financial support from the state, but instead rely heavily on donations.
Take Harvard University as an example; last year, charitable contributions accounted for 45 percent of the university's revenue, but most of that money came from one source, the university's endowment accumulated over four centuries, which reached $53 billion by 2024, the largest among all universities in the country.
But that does not mean that Harvard University can spend this money freely because the endowment is designed to fund the university sustainably, so there are rules that dictate how much money the university can withdraw from its endowment each year.
Last year, $2.4 billion from Harvard's endowment accounted for more than one-third of the university's funding, but the university said that 80 percent of that money is earmarked for specific purposes.
Smith says, "If a university decides to hire a professor in the English department, the institution is not legally allowed to use that money for any other purpose."
This is where the federal government comes in and its commitment to funding academic research.
Johns Hopkins University receives more money than any other entity in the United States; last year, Hopkins received $1 billion in funding from the National Institutes of Health, while Harvard University received $686 million in federal funding for research in the same year.
But all of that could fade away at once if the Trump administration carries out its threats to cut funding.
Johns Hopkins University has already laid off thousands of employees after significant cuts in funding from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), which cost the university $800 million.
The Legacy of World War II:
The federal government has not always played this pivotal role in academic research, but World War II fundamentally changed the relationship between government and universities in the United States.
President Franklin Roosevelt believed that scientific progress would be crucial to winning the war, so he signed an executive order in 1941 to create the Office of Scientific Research and Development, rallying the nation's top scientists and researchers to innovate more advanced weapons and technologies.
The Office of Scientific Research and Development funded research programs at universities across the country, and the work of those scientists and researchers led to the invention of the atomic bomb, radar, and significant advancements in medicine and military technologies.
The office was dissolved after the war, but the partnership between the federal government and colleges and universities has not been dissolved, and it has helped place the country at the forefront of global scientific innovation for over 70 years, and still does.
Innovations at stake:
Colleges and universities across the country are applying for and competing for federal grants to conduct research, which enables the government to fund the best researchers at a lower cost, and federal funding also helps cover most of the costs of maintaining research facilities.
This funding makes universities, in essence, resemble national laboratories.
Toby Smith, senior vice president for government relations at the Association of American Universities, said, "When you pull funding from universities, you are pulling funding from the best researchers that other scientists have chosen to conduct that research on behalf of the American people in vital research areas like cancer, Alzheimer's, pediatrics, diabetes, and others."
He added that many scientific developments that saved lives and deserved Nobel Prizes relied on federal grants.
Smith said, "We will be in imminent danger if the United States stops its federal funding for colleges and universities; the United States will not possess the knowledge, and other countries will surpass us in science and technology, and ultimately, the American people will lose."