With federal research funding imperiled by brutal cuts under the Trump administration, biomedical graduate programs nationwide are making tough decisions that will scale back the next generation of scientists.
On Wednesday, news broke that UMass Chan Medical School—a public school in the University of Massachusetts system—has rescinded all offers of admission to biomedical graduate students for the 2025–2026 school year. That means an entire class of future scientists has been wiped out. Those who were initially accepted to the program can try to join again in a future cycle under a priority consideration that won’t require them to reapply, according to a letter sent to a previously admitted student that was shared on social media.
In a statement provided to NBC10 Boston, a spokesperson for the school confirmed that several dozen applicants had their acceptance offers rescinded. “With uncertainties related to the funding of biomedical research in this country, this difficult decision was made to ensure that our current students’ progress is not disrupted by the funding cuts and that we avoid matriculating students who may not have robust opportunities for dissertation research,” the statement reads.
Rachael Sirianni, a biomedical engineer in the Department of Neurological Surgery at UMass Chan Medical School who works on treatments for pediatric brain tumors, called the situation “heartbreaking.” Writing on Bluesky, Sirianni called it “a terrible loss for students. But it’s also a loss for all of science. Science *runs* on grad student labor.” But, she added: “Public medical schools have no other choice; there is no other source of funding, and everyone in academia is at extreme risk right now.”
Cuts across the country
UMass is the latest biomedical graduate program to make news for cutbacks amid the Trump administration’s new policies. The administration has halted new grant funding and is trying to radically cut support for so-called “indirect” research costs, which cover maintaining laboratory space and administrative functions, among other things. The cut has been temporarily put on hold amid a legal battle.
Many schools are now bracing for steep declines in support. At Duke University, administrators have implemented hiring freezes, scaled back research plans, and will cut the number of admitted biomedical PhD students by 23 percent or more, according to reporting by the Associated Press. The school took in $580 million in grants and contracts from the National Institutes of Health last year.
At Vanderbilt University, faculty were sent an email on February 6 instructing them to reduce graduate admissions by half across the board, according to Stat. The outlet also reported that faculty at the University of Washington’s School of Public Health have reduced admissions.
Faculty at the University of Pennsylvania also reported having to rescind admission offers to applicants and were directed to significantly reduce admission rates, according to The Daily Pennsylvanian. The University of Wisconsin-Madison, too, is shrinking its graduate programs, according to the WKOW.com.
Beth Sullivan, who oversees graduate programs at Duke, told the AP that the shrinking classes mean a shrinking pipeline into America’s medical research community, which dominates the world’s health research fields and is a significant force in the country’s economy. “Our next generation of researchers are now poised on the edge of this cliff, not knowing if there’s going to be a bridge that’s going to get them to the other side, or if this is it,” Sullivan said.
“This is a severe blow to science and the training of the next generation of scientists,” Siyuan Wang, a geneticist and cell biologist at the Yale School of Medicine in New Haven, Connecticut, told Nature. “With fewer scientists, there will be less science and innovation that drive societal progress and the improvement of public health.”
This post was updated to correct Rachael Sirianni’s job title.