Deep cuts to federal research funding and crackdowns on international students could mean far fewer graduate students next fall and beyond. If that happens, undergraduates, faculty and research productivity would all suffer. Under mounting financial and political pressures, universities have paused or rescinded graduate student admissions on an unprecedented scale, which could create cross-campus ripple effects next fall and beyond. The extent of the cuts to the graduate student workforce remains unclear and will vary from institution to institution. But if and when those losses come to pass, experts say that employing fewer graduate students—particularly Ph.D. students, who typically hold years-long research and teaching assistantships—will undermine universities’ broader operations, including undergraduate education, faculty support and the future of academic research, which is reliant on training the next generation of scholars.
