On Oct. 14, 2026, this fall, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where 95% of students are STEM majors, enrolled nearly 500 fewer graduate students — a 20% drop compared to 2024. The reduction is a direct result of a $100 million cut in federal research awards to the institution in that same timespan, MIT President Sally Kornbluth said at the STAT Summit in Boston. Graduate students are largely supported with these grants, and “if we admit someone, we don’t want them to be partway through their Ph.D. and run out of funding, so we tend to be conservative on the front end,” Kornbluth said. “I wish I had a crystal ball and knew when things were going to turn around, but for now we’re just being cautious.”

It’s not just MIT. Universities across the country have suspended or shrunk admissions to graduate programs in response to a tumultuous 18 months that have included unprecedented grant terminations, funding delays, and policy changes to how science is supported at the federal level. Even if the upcoming midterms usher in a power shift in Congress, it will do little to change the uncertainty faced by academic institutions regarding the reliability of the U.S. government as a science funding partner, particularly in light of a recently revealed plan for political appointees to gain more control over National Institutes of Health grantmaking decisions.

“We will go toe-to-toe with the best of them based on merit. If there are other elements that lead to being funded or not, we don’t have control of that and that concerns me,” Kornbluth said. “I think we just have to do our very best science and feel like that in the end will win the day, and the country needs that.”

Kornbluth was joined by Holden Thorp, editor-in-chief of the Science family of journals, to argue for the model of American research that for the last 80 years propelled the U.S. to global dominance in science, technology, and medicine. First articulated by Vannevar Bush in his 1945 report “The Endless Frontier,” it involved sustained public funding of science at research universities and federal laboratories and a commitment to open inquiry.

Even before the last 18 months of disruptions and delays to government investment, the U.S. was on its way to losing its place of prominence as the world’s largest public funder of science. “The atmosphere is just so much more pro-science there than it is here,” Thorp said, recounting a recent trip to China in which he sat down with presidents of several universities. 

It’s getting results. Nine out of the top 10 academic research institutions are now in China, according to the latest data from the Nature Index, with Harvard University as the lone U.S. representative. A decade ago, American universities held half of the top 10 spots.  to surpass the U.S. on research spending in the next two to three years. On the ground, that means buildings going up, more people going to graduate school, and a tangible sense of momentum. 

How these dueling visions of research in America play out will in some ways be shaped by the outcomes of the next few elections. But science happens on a longer time scale, and both Thorp and Kornbluth pointed to the need of scientists and academics everywhere, regardless of who holds power in Washington, to confront the underlying political reality of rising populism and cratering trust in institutions.