National Science Foundation Funding Cuts Hit Education

The outlook for federal spending on education research continues to be grim. That became clear last month with more cutbacks to education grants and mass firings at the National Science Foundation, the independent federal agency that supports both research and education in science, engineering and math. A fourth round of cutbacks took place on May 9. National Science Foundation observers were still trying to piece together the size and scope of this wave of destruction. A division focused on equity in education was eliminated and all its employees were fired. And the process for reviewing and approving future research grants was thrown into chaos with the elimination of division directors who were stripped of their powers.

Meanwhile, there was more clarity surrounding a third round of cuts that took place a week earlier on May 2. That round terminated more than 330 grants, raising the total number of terminated grants to at least 1,379, according to Grant Watch, a new project launched to track the Trump administration’s termination of grants at scientific research agencies. All but two of the terminated grants in early May were in the education division, and mostly targeted efforts to promote equity by increasing the participation of women and Black and Hispanic students in STEM fields.

The number of active grants by the Division of Equity for Excellence in STEM within the education directorate was slashed almost in half, from 902 research grants to 461. Combined with two earlier rounds of National Science Foundation cuts at in April, education now accounts for more than half of the nearly 1,400 terminated grants and almost three-quarters of their $1 billion value. Those dollars will no longer flow to universities and research organizations.

It remains unclear exactly how National Science Foundation is choosing which grants to cancel and exactly who is making the decisions. Weekly waves of cuts began after the Department of Government Efficiency or DOGE entered National Science Foundation headquarters in mid April. Only 40 percent of the terminated grants were also in a database of 3,400 research grants compiled last year by Sen. Ted Cruz, a Texas Republican. Cruz characterized them as “questionable projects that promoted Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) or advanced neo-Marxist class warfare propaganda.” Sixty percent were not on the Cruz list. Other National Science Foundation cuts also affect education. Earlier this year, National Science Foundation cut in half the number of new students that it would support through graduate school from 2,000 to 1,000.

Allison Green
Boston Tutoring Services