Federal Research Funding: Adaptations After A Year of Change

In 2025, the Trump administration cut upwards of $5 billion in National Institutes of Health (NIH) and National Science Foundation (NSF) grants, proposed eliminating the National Endowment for the Humanities and reformed the university accreditation system, making it more difficult for some institutions to obtain funding. The University of Chicago is no exception—according to The Chicago Maroon, $16.6 million in federal research grants have been terminated, including notable grants for projects researching HIV and COVID-19. 

While budget cuts would be troubling for any institution, the termination of these grants comes at an especially unstable time for UChicago. The University currently carries over $6 million in debt, and, while the University’s financial issues are more pronounced than most other peer institutions, they are not unique — the Wall Street Journal recently published an article calling UChicago “Exhibit A” for higher education institutions facing financial reckonings. In 2024, roughly 18% of the University’s operating budget came from federal grants. Now the school is scrambling to make up that difference via halting enrollment to select PhD programs, job cuts and more. 

Dr. Amanda Woodward is the Dean of the Division of Social Sciences at the University. With a background in psychology and a previous funding portfolio that includes the NIH, NSF, the Office of Naval Research and a variety of private foundations, she brings a unique angle to the topic of research financing. Given her direction of such a wide ranging scope of research — departments within the Division of Social Sciences range from neuroscience, to economics, to anthropology — her perspective on such a dynamic scientific field is comprehensive and well-positioned. 

We began in the spring of 2025, when Woodward says certain federal grants were initially cancelled university-wide, and were “communicated to investigators mainly as the topic of the research no longer being consistent with the federal government’s priorities” without any more specific reasoning. She acknowledges the initial nervousness that accompanied these cuts, but mentioned that UChicago specifically did not experience as many canceled grants as initially projected, both in the Social Sciences Division and others. This meant that, while individual researchers may have been affected, the institutional impact was not as monumental as originally feared, and only a few labs within Woodward’s division were directly influenced. She also mentioned that the Social Sciences Division has a bridge policy to help investigators continue essential functions during lapses in funding. This policy was able to mitigate some of the immediate effects.

Looking broadly at federal research funding as a whole, Woodward emphasized two perpetual realities: the “long term” impact and the “priority” aspect. Long term funding comes down to whether federal agencies have the budgets necessary to continue allocating to universities, which has been an ongoing conversation in Congress across many different presidential administrations, both Democratic and Republican. At the same time, every federal agency has its own policy and research priorities, which, according to Woodward, is just the reality of government funds. While she did not point to a specific case, the NIH’s decision to fast-track COVID-19 vaccine development in 2020 is one such example of a federal agency expediting or otherwise rearranging funding in accordance with institutional goals.

Woodward also pointed out that one of the strengths of the social sciences at UChicago is the heterogeneous nature of their funding. Many departments within the University’s division do not draw on large-scale federal funding at all, and, while both governmental and private funding are important and contribute to the overall budget, private foundations contribute more to the social sciences department than any other source. Due to this diversified portfolio, the social sciences department at UChicago may be slightly more insulated than other research divisions in terms of extensive changes on the federal funding scene. 

Woodward praised the University’s actions in response to this rapidly changing landscape. She mentioned that “one really important form of support is the provision of information — helping investigators understand what is happening, what isn’t happening, and what might happen” and mentioned a weekly newsletter internal to the University that provides up-to-date information about the federal funding scene. Woodward highlighted that the University has been very active in supporting researchers as they navigate changing priorities and look to potentially new avenues of funding while honoring their initial questions. 

Woodward was straightforward about the fact that this moment of uncertainty may have consequences for the future of social science research that we do not yet understand. However, she concluded our conversation by staying optimistic and acknowledging that the future of the field depends on thinking strategically about funders while continuing to ask good questions — as the division always has. 

Image from Quang Vuong, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 International.