The major development this week is the federal government’s decision to cut $400 million in grants (supposedly they were going to cut $3 billion at first). We do not have additional insights to offer at this moment. However, three key points stand out: (1) the announcement describes this as a “freeze” rather than something more permanent, (2) Education Secretary McMahon had what was described as a “productive” meeting with Interim President Armstrong, and (3) officials have emphasized a one-month deadline. Given the sensitivity of the situation and the inherent uncertainty, speculation is neither useful nor productive.
Instead, we’ll look into history again. There’s been a lot of interest in the work the Stand Columbia Society has done on American universities’ financial exposure to the federal government. So this week, we’ll explore how that began.
Here are the facts: first, nearly every college and university—regardless of whether they are nominally public or private—is heavily dependent on federal government funding. Second, this partnership between successive administrations and universities has fueled some of the most significant technological and scientific advancements in history, benefiting not only the U.S. but humanity as a whole. However, it also represents a social contract: federal investment in higher education demands a reciprocal commitment to serving national interests and maintaining public trust. Third, in light of this history (and the sheer level of funding), it seems uninformed and anachronistic to argue that research institutions can go back to the world before federal funding.
When King’s College was founded in 1754, it was initially funded by the proceeds of several lotteries and several major gifts, including a private bequest from King George III of £500 (approximately $125,000 today). For nearly two hundred years, Columbia—and all American colleges and universities—operated on a simple model: charge tuition, raise gifts and bequests, pay faculty and staff, rinse and repeat. Perhaps the greatest contribution to America’s university system in the 19th century was the Morrill Land Grant of 1862 where the government granted 30,000 acres to every state to start a university to teach science, engineering, and military tactics (there was a civil war going on in 1862).
The birth of the modern research university
World War II dramatically expanded the federal role in education. The U.S. government recognized the strategic importance of scientific research and opened the floodgates of federal funding. Under the leadership of legendary Vannevar Bush, the Office of Scientific Research and Development allocated $536 million (nearly $10 billion in today’s dollars) to universities such as Harvard, MIT, Caltech, and the University of Chicago. This funding led to groundbreaking advancements: radar, jet engines, early computers, mass-produced penicillin, and, in the basement of Pupin Hall, a little something known as the Manhattan Project.
After the war, the federal government realized it had inadvertently created a new kind of institution: the government-supported research university. As Cold War tensions escalated, the federal government continued funding academic research, leading to transformative technological advancements and economic growth. This created a virtuous cycle—public funds fueled university research, which drove technological innovation, spurred economic expansion, and generated tax revenue that was reinvested in higher education.
Government agencies played a pivotal role in sustaining this cycle. President Harry Truman established the National Science Foundation. Former Columbia President Dwight D. Eisenhower, in response to the Sputnik crisis, spearheaded the creation of the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA, later DARPA), NASA, and the National Defense Education Act (NDEA).
How the American people have benefitted from federal support of higher education
Over the past 80 years, this partnership has made the U.S. the global leader in research and development, yielding technologies and discoveries that have transformed society, including:
- The Internet (developed as ARPANET at UC Berkeley, Stanford, and the University of Utah)
- GPS (pioneered at Johns Hopkins)
- Modern computing (ENIAC, developed at the University of Pennsylvania)
- Lithium-ion batteries (University of Texas at Austin)
- Lasers (foundational work by Columbia professor and Nobel Laureate Charles Townes)
- MRI technology (initially developed with NIH grants, foundational work by Columbia professor and Nobel Laureate I.I. Rabi)
Federal support extends beyond research funding. The Higher Education Act of 1965 included Title IV, which today underpins the federal student financing system, making college education accessible to millions. This means that even “private” universities are deeply intertwined with government funding, with very few exceptions—primarily religiously affiliated teaching colleges such as Hillsdale College who refuse federal aid on principle.
Some faculty members have naively suggested that universities could (or should?) sever ties with the government and operate independently of federal funding. This notion is highly uninformed—especially at a time when China and other American competitors are doubling down on creating American style research universities (NYU in the UAE; Yale in Singapore; China pouring billions into its own institutions). Cutting off federal funding would dismantle modern research institutions, reduce our universities to 19th century teaching colleges, eliminate thousands of jobs, erase decades of scientific progress, severely undermine America’s global standing in research and technology, and demolish one of our greatest sources of hard and soft power.
Rebuilding trust
The partnership between the government and universities is both a financial arrangement and a social contract. In exchange for taxpayer investment, universities have been expected to drive innovation, enhance national prosperity, foster economic growth—but also serve national interests and maintain public trust. However, in recent decades, public trust in higher education has eroded. A combination of administrative failures and ideological extremism has alienated large segments of the American public. Bipartisan confidence in universities has plummeted, fueled by perceptions of a declining return on investment, administrative bloat, and most prominently in the past year, instances of political radicalism and universities’ inability—or unwillingness—to address public concerns.
To put it bluntly, few can comprehend why some privileged young people think distributing material produced by the “Hamas Media Office” is a good idea, while some of their educators and disciplinarians appear to somewhat approve of plane hijackings (so long as, apparently, the hijacking victims are fed.)
Nor do we think that criticisms from policymakers—especially those from the Trump administration—are a simplistic surge of resentment against elite institutions. They reflect a broader sense of alienation between the American public and its educational institutions. This alienation is dangerous. This divide must be bridged. Higher education is one of our nation’s greatest soft and hard-power assets, and maintaining public confidence in its mission is crucial.
This is, as Columbia/Barnard Hillel Executive Director Brian Cohen put it, “a wake-up call.” The Stand Columbia Society has heard from many faculty who have received stop work orders and contract cancellations. Their research, careers, labs, and livelihoods—and the students, junior faculty, early career investigators, trainees, and other learners they support—are at risk because of a few cosplaying protesters (egged on by radicals unaffiliated with the university) living in an alternate reality. One of this nation’s greatest assets cannot be held hostage by their immaturity. Over the next 30 days, we hope to see concrete steps toward restoring trust and ensuring that the extraordinary partnership between academia and government continues to thrive for generations to come. May the road to repairing that frayed social contract—if not repairing the world—begin now.
News Roundup
– March 8, 2025. WE WIN!!! The Spectator reports that Columbia women’s basketball has won its first outright Ivy League title, against Cornell, 91-58. This effort was led by seniors Kitty Henderson and Cecelia Collins. This season also, the team defeated Princeton for the first time since 2018-19’s basketball season. Chalk us up for two Ivy League titles this year.
– March 7, 2025. The Free Press reported this week that the Trump administration has canceled $400 million in grants to Columbia University. According to the task force implementing the cuts, this is “only the beginning.” This denial of federal funding comes after what the administration sees as Columbia’s “failure” to “take steps to confront antisemitism on campus.” Currently, Columbia has more than $5 billion worth of “active” federal grants that are being looked over by the administration. This all comes a few days after Katrina Armstrong received word from the Trump administration that they would be taking over $5 billion in federal funding if Columbia did not adequately address antisemitism.
– March 7, 2025. The WSJ reported that UVA has gotten fully on board with DEI cuts. UVA’s Board of Visitors (their Trustees) have chosen a plan to “dissolve” all DEI programs at their school as well as any DEI roles or offices in their broader UVA system. This encompasses “admissions, hiring, promotion, compensation, financial aid, scholarships, prizes . . . discipline, housing, graduation ceremonies and all other aspects of student, academic and campus life” to ensure UVA is compliant with both the US Constitution as well as the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Virginia’s governor Glenn Youngkin described the decision as “a huge step toward restoring the ideas and pillars of Thomas Jefferson and the university that he founded, that everyone is created equal, that we will not have illegal discrimination, that we will restore merit-based opportunity.”
– March 6, 2025. The Spectator reports in a series of stories the events at Barnard this past week. After a bomb threat was called in, Barnard asked the NYPD to clear the building and assess the bomb threat. Nine protestors (none of them current Barnard affiliates, but four of them current Columbia affiliates) were arrested.
– March 6, 2025. The New York Times reports that students themselves are now getting cut due to Trump’s federal funding changes in universities. Many universities and colleges have been narrowing the number of doctoral students they accept and even, in certain instances, taking back existing offers that were already extended. Penn has asked departments within its School of Arts & Sciences (the largest school of the university) to cull incoming PhDs. Wendy Roth, a professor of sociology there, had to herself renege on some offers already made to students, and had to explain why those choices had been made. Penn could stand to lose $250 million in funding from N.I.H. only. To deal with similar threats and issues, Yale, historically one of the biggest recipients of money from N.I.H., decided to give temporary funding from its own endowment to academics at its institution.
– March 4, 2025. The Boston Globe published an op-ed this week from Harvard Medical School professor Dr. Jeffrey Flier and MIT Sloan professor Pierre Azoulay. They argue that while the N.I.H. does need reform, those reforms should be precise and not “random,” using a “scalpel, not a hatchet.” They write, “reforms should be grounded in evidence rather than tradition, avoiding the influence of special interests or political considerations.” And they also emphasize the importance of the N.I.H. as an institution that has supported basically every single American Nobel laureate in medicine and funded important medical breakthroughs. They also cite the N.I.H. as being part of the infrastructure that upholds academic research and America’s biggest pharma companies as well as biotech startups. Given the limited liability of pharmaceutical companies and in light of recent events, this is a mixed bag, but their point is taken.