On a Monday evening last month, Georgia State University professor Stephanie Cross received an email that university researchers across the country have come to fear.
It was a notice of a grant termination. An award from the U.S. Department of Education — used to fund a project designed to retain new teachers in Atlanta’s public school system — had been canceled. Without warning, the federal money that paid for a team of about 35 GSU researchers who were part of the program was gone. So too was the $365,000 in wages and stipends that had been promised to more than 100 public school teachers.
“It was devastating,” Cross recalled. “There are so many incredibly skilled individuals who have devoted years and years to this work, to new teachers within Atlanta Public Schools. And when I saw that letter, I knew they were losing their jobs overnight.”
Credit: AP
Credit: AP
Following President Donald Trump’s executive orders targeting federal funds at American universities, Cross and other researchers in the Peach State have watched their grants evaporate. The University of Georgia, for instance, has had nine grants terminated. Georgia Tech has lost three. GSU has lost at least that many, with Cross’s former colleagues now scrambling to find new sources of income. “I’m a single parent with children,” said one of the suddenly unemployed researchers, who asked not to be named due to fears of retaliation given administration actions resulted in her recent job loss. “How am I going to pay my mortgage and car note? It’s overwhelming.”
Most grants, however, remain untouched. Researchers hope it’ll stay that way. But they don’t know for sure, and they don’t know if they can count on more grants in the future. Amid that uncertainty, some are hesitating to bring on new staff. They worry Georgia’s universities could follow suit by admitting fewer graduate students to conserve funding. The ultimate result, academics like Moore fear, could be a “lost generation” of students who turn away from the sciences to pursue careers that suddenly appear more stable.
“This is like nothing I’ve experienced. I just don’t have any framework that allows me to understand what I should be doing in this situation. It’s truly unprecedented,” said Patricia Moore, an entomology professor who runs a lab at UGA. “I don’t know what to say other than it’s a mess and I’m terrified.”
Moore and other professors interviewed in this article said they were speaking on their own behalf, not for their universities.
Chaos and Confusion
Scientific labs at American universities are like small businesses perpetually in the startup phase; these independent enterprises constantly need to find new funding sources to afford equipment and research staff. That means applying for grants, competing with other labs to win federal awards to stay afloat.
“Research funding is always uncertain, but the level of uncertainty has just ratcheted up,” said John Harris, a graduate research assistant at Georgia Tech.
Describing a new environment of “chaos and confusion,” Moore and other researchers say planning for the future has become difficult, if not impossible, amid sporadic funding cuts and freezes. They don’t know if there will be enough grants available down the road, and if awarded grants will even be honored.
Emory University recently responded to the uncertainty by announcing a freeze on hiring staff positions. “With potential changes in university funding looming, Emory must take prudent measures to prepare for what may be a significant disruption to our finances,” Emory President Gregory Fenves said in a message to the campus community. Similarly, Georgia Tech’s College of Computing has restricted staff and faculty hiring to start dates of July 2026 or later, a decision the school said was made in part due to federal uncertainty. Other schools across the nation are making changes. Johns Hopkins University said Thursday it had begun laying off more than 2,000 workers after losing $800 million in federal grants cut by the Trump administration.
Credit: Jenni Girtman
Credit: Jenni Girtman
Schools like UGA have advised their researchers to stay the course: proceed as normal until the federal government says otherwise. But that’s easier said than done. Many researchers don’t want to hire new staff unless they’re certain they’ll be able to pay them. Moore, for instance, has a job opening for a postdoctoral research associate. She hasn’t been advertising it because she doesn’t want to risk someone uprooting their life only to later learn their funding has disappeared.
“UGA has been really clear: ‘Keep going, keep going, don’t change what you’re doing,’” said Moore. “But it’s much harder to do that when you’re sitting across table from somebody who is asking you, ‘Do I have a paycheck in six months?’”
Last month, the Trump administration, on a Friday, quietly announced major cuts to federal biomedical research funding to the National Institutes of Health, which provides millions of dollars in support annually to several Georgia universities. The administration said costs such as lab space, equipment and certain personnel expenses often were too high and would be capped at 15% of the “direct” research costs in the grant. Days later, a federal judge blocked the plan.
UGA plant biology professor James Leebens-Mack said containing budget costs is important. “But it has to be done in a thoughtful way, not it in a chaotic, shoot first, aim later fashion,” he said.
A lost generation
As a tenured professor with job security, the terror Moore has is not for herself, but for a “lost generation” of would-be scientists.
Whether its undergrads considering the field, or postdoctorates many years into their research, every level of science relies on federal funding, said UGA grad student Michelle Henson, a recent victim of the federal cuts at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The mom of two young children had worked there for just one month and planned to stay with the agency until retirement. But with her career trajectory suddenly upended, and with many laid off academics competing for a smaller number of job opportunities, she is now considering finding work overseas.
So is Jordan Argrett, a PhD student in UGA’s ecology program who noted that scientific researchers are typically not well-paid. It’s their passion, he said, that drives them to the career. But in recent conversations he’s had with peers and undergraduates, the uncertainty is pushing people away. “I love what I do but I could be doing data analysis for a corporation and be making quadruple the amount,” said Argrett.
The potential exodus risks the U.S. position as a science powerhouse, said Leebens-Mack, who has seen his own students now questioning their career aspirations. At best, he thinks significant federal cuts would lose universities a cohort of young researchers. A 15% cap on indirect costs, he said, would be, “taking a scientific research enterprise that’s been envy of the world and driving it into the ground.”
“End at any moment”
Cross, the Georgia State professor, had been working on the teacher retainment program for more than a decade. The three-year residency aimed to keep teachers in school by offering funding and mentorship, and while it served educators from various backgrounds, it found clear success with Black teachers. It was a valuable result considering APS overwhelmingly consists of Black and Hispanic students.
But the U.S. Department of Education found the program “divisive.” It was one of over $600 million in teacher training grants that the department cut last month.
Credit: Gabriela McNicoll
Credit: Gabriela McNicoll
“Teacher prep programs should be prioritizing training that prepares youth with the fundamentals they need to succeed for the future, not wasting valuable training resources on divisive ideologies,” department spokesperson Savannah Newhouse said in a statement to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
A federal judge Monday ordered the Trump administration to temporarily reinstate funding for those programs, but only in the eight states where attorneys general — all Democrats — sued over the decision. Because Georgia did not sue, Cross’s best hope appears to be the appeal she filed with the education department.
In the meantime, her former colleagues are out of a job and the early-career teachers are without the funding that many used to pay rent and afford groceries.
The program’s success earned it a national award recognizing, “significant contributions to the theory and practice of teacher education.” Cross fears that without it, fewer teachers will apply for and remain in jobs at APS. And after watching so many of her colleagues have their livelihoods yanked from them without warning, she isn’t sure she’ll be applying for more federal funding in the future.
“I’d have a hard time interviewing both staff and teacher participants if we were to get more funding,” she said. “Knowing it seems like it could end at any moment.”
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