Top research universities admit 15% fewer Ph.D. students, NYT reports
www.nytimes.com/2026/07/06/u... an ominous trend: graduate admissions are down 15 percent from last year, on top of an 11 percent decrease from the previous year we are destroying our seed corn
neanderthal53.bsky.social32This statement from the regime is quintessential doublespeak.
Navin Pokala 🇺🇸🇺🇦🇨🇦🇬🇱27Given that the sole beneficiary of the destruction of American scientific leadership is the Chinese Communist Party, it is reasonable to ask how much Chinese money is flowing to Russell Vought, the chief architect of America’s surrender to Xi Jinping www.nytimes.com/2026/07/06/u...
David Sanders20“I really feel as if the administration is engaged in reverse alchemy, and it’s turning America’s scientific gold into lead,” says David Sanders, a sleuth and biologist at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana. www.nature.com/articles/d41...
Soumya Rangarajan, MD, MPP17Recently worked with an MD, PhD who dropped a #research fast track and decided to just pursue categorical #residency with a plan to be mostly a full time #clinician in his specialty of choice. Smart move honestly, but he likely would not have made that decision if we were under POTUS Harris 🤦🏻♀️
Ms. Trannÿ of Tÿranny 🏳️⚧️14It's almost like we all cant afford it and everyone's outsourcing our jobs to people whose home countries fund their higher educational goals..... like what every smart country does.
ChristineAa8It is difficult to commit to even more student debt in this economy. The US does not value education. Other countries do. College is free in civilized countries. Germany, Norway, and Iceland: Free. Argentina and Brazil: Free. Sweden and Finland: Free. Austria, Denmark, and Slovenia: Free.
Chanda Prescod-Weinstein 🌌303A possibility we haven’t discussed enough is that they will start reinvesting in science but in a way where people have to sign away their souls. Things like: 1. You agree not to care about DEI in a meaningful or noticeable way 2. You agree to serve the Pentagon if they call 🧪
Josh Marshall268pol pot just with grant revocation and punitive "investigations"
Arrianna Marie Planey, PhD MA97Being on the soft money side of academia, when funding is terminated on a whim & the peer review process is undermined, it means we can't predict funding for incoming students
Ioannis Ziogas74I co-direct a grad STEM program. Our admissions pipeline, which relies heavily on attracting foreign talent, is ~20% leaner. The best int'l students don't want to come and we don't have the funds to support them.
Physgal ⚛️33Meanwhile we’re seeing an increase in US students applying to our grad program in Canada.
Chemjobber26C&EN's @bethanyhalford.bsky.social was on this story a week ago for chemistry: (Of the top 31 US chemistry PhD producing schools) "20 schools reported that their incoming classes for 2026 would be smaller than for 2024—an average 37% fewer students than they took in 2024." #chemsky #chemchat
David Brauer25My daughter is in. STEM PhD program at a major blue-state university. Admitted the last year of the Biden administration, she was lucky enough to get a full 6-year stipend. The class after her only got 5 (meaning they had to come up with $$ on their own). This year they simply cut admissions.
Chatham Harrison dba TRUMP DELENDUS EST23Conservatively we're talking 1 in 3 positions gone by the time Trump leaves office if this trend continues
Alex Guseman22Two years ago we made >25 offers and had a class of 17.... This past year we offered a gut wrenching 8 offers and got a class of 5... SO many talented and deserving students did not get offers that normally would have. not sure how to fix it but i hope we do sooner rather than later
Dimitri Drekonja, MD, MS20This is decidedly NOT fine. Our scientific future is in peril 😳
You might think that the chancellors & presidents of the country’s leading R1 research universities, faced with such an existential crisis, would speak up, loudly & collectively against the authoritarian assault on their institutions. Alas, you would (still) be sadly wrong. bsky.app/profile/mcop...
Mark Copelovitch171There continues to be no plan for how to maintain R1 universities’ operations without foreign students & federal funding, but the public continues to not realize this, because our leaders - with about 4-5 exceptions - have been totally absent from the National Conversation™️
Lisa G6"Powerful" law firms buckled under this admin! It can only follow that everyone & everything else, including universities w billions in endowments won't go up against it. Powerful people used to at least pretend to have integrity & values in this country but not anymore. Only hate & greed remain
Nick6Would you hazard a guess that because universities have gone "run it like a business" , we have unserious leaders in these positions and they care more about the short term?
D555D1“Graduate admissions,” while technically accurate, is not the right term for the public. It's the number of graduate positions available; “graduate admissions” suggests that there’s a lack of students.
erflx.bsky.social1I hope that they are submitting comments on the OMB’s evil proposed policies.
MikahMiriam1It’s just Dr. Kornbluth speaking out alone while everyone else hides.
“It’s a loss for the nation…When you shrink the pipeline of basic discovery research, you choke off the flow of future solutions, innovations and cures—and you shrink the supply of future scientists.” #highered
Grit Pump13They can't admit PhD candidates when they have no grants. Ask the current regime why there aren't any grants. Meanwhile, those brilliant researchers are going to the EU and Canada instead. Reverse brain drain of epic proportions.
Snow Country for Old Men2Our Universities are what make us great. This is how you turn the US (along with rampant corruption) into one of those shithole countries Trump is always yapping about.
Jay2Actually much bigger drop from fall 2024 sizes
Benjamin Gill14I'm our program's graduate program director and we dialed back on then number of graduate students we admitted. Things won't immediately go back to normal after the this administration. It's going to take more time to build back what we had and that also assumes that our nation makes it a priority 🧪
Mary214Trump and MAGA Making America even more stupid
Eigen Blockchain2They have hollowed out NSF and NIH yet I have colleagues that believe this will all get ironed out somehow.
MAGA? The number of students admitted to Ph.D. programs this fall dropped 15% from the previous year, according to data from over 50 top research universities, raising fears that the nation’s capacity to produce new science could be diminished. www.nytimes.com/2026/07/06/u...
While applications from domestic students increased by 3% applications from international students fell by 21%, according to American Association of Universities survey (which confer half the research PhDs in the US.)
NoBo Pedro2When MIT and Cal Tech cut doctoral program admissions by 20% and 40%, respectively... ...canary in a coalmine
Dan1Honestly PhD students are so underpaid I don’t even know why anyone does it and I used to be in grad school so I speak from experience. Only rich families are able to do it.
Surprising what happens when you stop funding research
Grit Pump1It's not fears, it's facts. Reports clearly show we're seeing a massive reverse brain drain from the US to the EU and Canada, where research grants still exist. Right now, international PhD candidates rightly don't even consider the US. American PhD candidates are forced to look elsewhere.
canuckdisplaced.bsky.social1I have no idea what supervisors tell to their PhD students about the rosy job prospects after graduation. Certainly, there's nothing to be rosy about in terms of jobs in the US, and the rest of the world (except Asia) is a pretty small market.
We need to preserve, create, and spread knowledge. That is the very purpose of the University, and it speaks to the very core of our humanity. This is not the way. Research Universities Are Admitting Fewer Ph.D.s, a Bad Sign for Science www.nytimes.com/2026/07/06/u...
pseudothucydides.bsky.social2Okay but only if you're extremely clear with lots of loud blaring sirens warnings that there are no tenure track jobs that exist anymore, and won't ever be in our lifetimes.
Michael1MAGA doesn't want anyone who is richly educated here. The educated are the biggest threat to their 1860's ideals.
B Gilmer1When the USA oriented Higher Education into career training they largely abandoned the idea of 'preserving, creating and spreading knowledge'. Ph. D. support comes from those that can exploit the research for $. There is no open ended inquiry to peal back the darkness.
Jeff Sabin1The federal government's pulling back from education funding (whether through the grants mentioned or imposing the new student loan caps) is going to be sorely felt a decade from now.
Whatever else one can say about the United States, we used to have a higher education system that was the envy of the entire world. Now we're destroying that forever because a plurality of voters are too racist against foreigners. www.nytimes.com/2026/07/06/u...
Craig Johnson17leading the world in research of all kinds was a key part of "winning" the 20th century for the 21st the us has said: naaahhhh
Victor Luftig2The big picture here matters most, of course, but as re other higher ed. stats (such as low 6-year graduation rates and prohibitive tuition prices) we are apt to ignore the individual heartache generated by these failures: so many intellectually ambitious young people unable to pursue their dreams.
Breaking: chaotic federal funding cuts over the past year by the Trump administration has led to a 15% drop in admissions to PhD programs across more than 50 top research universities.
Union of Concerned Scientists9This isn't just an attack on the STEM talent pipeline, US scientific leadership, and an entire generation of scientists, it's an attack on equity: fewer PhD slots means fewer opportunities for low-income and international students to achieve the American dream and bring their talents here.
Kavi Kat 🌬️1Gee, maybe bc scholars are being targeted, censored, discriminated against & kept away from education. My philosophical research was infiltrated at University of North Carolina Greensboro. I posit that diversity is a crux of humanity. I will never achieve a PhD now. My dreams are crushed.
I do find it baffling that the MAHA & MAGA folks genuinely want China to become the world’s superpower for research and for innovation; China is doing all it can to offer graduate places at superb universities, knowing that MAHA/MAGA is willfully destroying academia. Why does MAGA/MAHA want this?
Dave Goldberg (he/him)11I think they honestly don't believe that science produces innovation and that innovation produces prosperity.
Zen Faulkes1Project 2025 spells out several reasons. A major one is the claim that federal research grants are used to subsidize universities’ “woke” agendas. There are also repeated angry references to the COVID response.
