For Hank Wang, the decision to pursue a doctorate in neuroscience was personal. His interest in the brain began when his grandmother developed dementia, and he watched her memory regress slowly. Now, from a lab at UC Berkeley, he is working to understand how the human brain works, how addiction forms, and how signals in our mind influence our behavior.
But this year, Wang and other graduate students across the country aren’t just dealing with their demanding studies and research. They’re also tracking their lab finances—along with the latest news headlines—to see whether their programs will even have the funding to continue.
As the Trump administration begins to cut or withhold millions and billions on higher education funding, many talented people like Wang who would normally continue to advance their research in the U.S. are now considering going elsewhere.
In the U.S., the National Institutes of Health (NIH) grants are a big part of biomedical research, and prior to the Trump administration’s return, NIH grants were a reliable path for academic freedom within biomedical research.
“I never would have thought that in the U.S. there would be so much of a funding constraint,” Wang said.
“We’re in the ‘richest country in the world,’ so we expect [universities] to have the resources to be at the forefront of all these issues,” Wang said.
Instead, Wang’s mother has been encouraging him to look into fully funded research roles in Beijing and Hong Kong, where his family is from.
In China, “They’re willing to fully fund your visa, as well as any plans for long-term stay, if you commit to a job or a research position there,” Wang said.
Despite the cuts and threats to higher education being imposed by the Trump administration, more students than ever have been applying for graduate school. But Bloomberg Law reported that as enrollment in graduate programs increases, so does the concern about the possibility of a recession, as more students feel the need to get a higher education to obtain a job.
Across the country, applicants to graduate programs have been receiving mixed messages about their admissions. Some students have reported that their admissions to research programs were unexpectedly rescinded, with West Virginia University officials citing “budgetary challenges resulting from proposed federal budget cuts to research funding” in a letter to one applicant. The University of Pennsylvania, meanwhile, had to rescind 10 of its 17 accepted applicants following announced budget cuts.
In the field of neuroscience in particular, Wang said, research is very expensive and budget cuts make it hard to provide the supplies and resources to conduct research.
“A neuropixel probe, which is used to measure electrical signals in the brain, costs $3,000 for a single one,” Wang said. And in terms of the animals used for experiments, “some of the transgenic mice can cost a couple of grand. They’re like a car.”
Transgenic mice — not to be confused with so-called “transgender mice” that Trump erroneously referred to in his State of the Union speech — are genetically modified mice used in research to mimic human diseases and test treatments. Nonetheless, Trump’s comment opened up a broader conversation about research becoming politicized, as his administration targets studies that involve transgender health, HIV transmission, and racial disparities in medicine.
The current distortion of language makes it harder for people to understand the actual research that is being done, Wang said, and easier for Trump to cast that funding as wasteful.
“Without transgenic mice, a large portion of our translational medicine would go out the window,” Wang said. “I’m really disappointed that [the] confusion has reached so far, and it’s setting back research that could save lives.”
As a result of these foreboding trends in U.S. higher education, Wang like many others is looking for a way out. Research institutions abroad are increasingly willing to take in American talent, while often offering higher salaries than their counterparts in the U.S. Still, he said, the research and infrastructure in programs overseas often lags behind the quality of American research labs.
“You get paid a lot as a researcher in Asia,” Wang said. “The resources you have may not be as much, but the pay is very different. The safety and opportunity that you get from living in China are much different.”
Wang recalled stories from a former classmate who worked in a lab abroad, and reported that researchers were expected to reuse pipette tips, a plastic and normally single-use item.
With NIH grants being stripped in the U.S. and research abroad lagging behind, researchers can turn to one remaining avenue: private funding.
The Center for Strategic and International Studies found that private research funding accounted for 75 percent of broad-based research funding, totaling $602 billion. Privately funded research is not stopping, but Wang warns that there could be conflicts of interest in this type of research.
“There’s some conflict of interest, according to that company, in giving funding to a physician-scientist to do research that provides whatever narrative they might want. I’m not saying all companies are evil, but they are evil-shaped — and they can say, ‘We’re not going to support your funding anymore unless you give us results more to our liking.’ Thankfully, with government research, it’s not like that.”
Wang’s concern about private funding isn’t unfounded. As public research dollars shrink, some scientists turn to corporate sponsors, raising questions about the influence of private interests on academic integrity. For Wang, that risk is just another reason why government funding is critical, it allows researched the freedom to research with no strings attached.
The growing uncertainty around research and funding has left graduate students like Wang wondering if they can continue to pursue their future in the country they once believed to be the global leader in innovation.
“We’re losing a whole generation of scientists,” Wang said. “And for science in particular, it’s always one generation that carries the torch to the next. We all stand on the shoulders of giants.”
Unless something changes, as he suggested, the brightest American minds will be innovating elsewhere.