The Trump Administration has tried to weaponize federal funding as a way to weaken colleges and universities and bend them to its will. In addition to freezing grants at some institutions and cancelling grants that it has deemed illegal, the administration has tried to cut the amount of funding administered through the National Institute of Health, National Science Foundation, and other vital programs that have helped establish the United States as the world’s leading nation for research and innovation.
The good news is that all of these efforts are being challenged in courts, and the plaintiffs working to protect higher education research have scored multiple victories. It is unclear whether these victories will hold if the government challenges reach the Supreme Court.
What is clear is how much damage these cuts will do to hundreds of institutions who rely on federal grants and contracts to fund research that not only benefits all of us but also employs significant numbers of people and provides training and experience to the next generation of researchers.
In order to weigh the potential impact of federal funding cuts, I calculated the share of total revenue that comes from federal grants and contracts. At many institutions, it represents a small portion. Across all institutions that received any money from federal grants and contracts, the average share of revenue is 9%. There are, however, over 550 institutions where federal grants represent 10% or more of total revenue. Unsurprisingly, large research universities rely significantly on federal grants for their revenue, but the sector that relies the most on them is tribal colleges.
If we look at the shares by state, it’s clear that red and blue states benefit from federal grants and contracts.
It’s even easier to see the bipartisan impact that cuts to federal grants could have on institutions of higher education if you look at it by U.S. House district and by share.
Here’s a similar view but for total funding to institutions of higher education.
This table shows the aggregate federal funding for university and colleges through grants and contracts by each member of the House of Representatives.
There is certainly reason to hope that the Trump administration’s efforts will fail, but the uncertainty and instability around funding has already done real damage to research in our nation.
You can look up 3,000 institutions to see how much of their total revenue comes from federal grants and contracts. In five districts, the congressional seat is currently empty. In those cases, I used the most recent seatholder to identify party affiliation.
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