Science Policy and Funding

In 2025, science funding in the U.S. became a direct battleground for broader political fights. New departments and executive orders targeted “efficiency” and “oversight” in grantmaking, leading to attempts to slash budgets at major agencies such as the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Some of these cuts and policies—like strict caps on what universities can recover for research overhead—were blocked or delayed by the courts, but the uncertainty alone pushed universities to freeze hiring and admissions.

Congress has often pushed back on the deepest proposed cuts, sometimes restoring or even slightly increasing funding, but negotiations now routinely go down to the wire. The result is a system where scientists write multi‑year research plans while not knowing if their agency will have a stable budget even a few months out. For many labs, that makes planning staff, long‑term experiments, or big equipment investments feel like a gamble.

Beyond total dollars, agencies are changing *how* money flows. NIH, for example, is moving more grants to upfront payments and shortening how long researchers have to spend the funds, compressing multi‑year work into tighter timelines. It is also exploring limits on using grant money to pay journal publication fees, which could reshape how scientists choose where and how to publish.

These shifts land hardest on early‑career scientists. New NIH data show that success rates for early‑stage investigators seeking major grants fell from about 30% in 2023 to under 19% in 2025. At the same time, a significant share of canceled NSF grants had ties to diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts, reflecting how cultural debates spill into funding decisions. Together, these trends risk thinning the pipeline of young researchers and narrowing whose ideas are funded.

Science policy increasingly turns on the question: *Which areas are “strategic”?* NSF is preparing large, long‑term awards for nontraditional teams to tackle use‑driven challenges where the U.S. wants to “retain or regain technical dominance,” including AI, quantum technology, critical materials, semiconductors, and biotechnology. Awards of up to tens of millions per team per year are on the table, shifting attention toward big, mission‑oriented projects with commercialization potential.

At the same time, advocates warn that key areas like basic physics, climate research, and broad life‑science inquiry risk being underfunded if they do not align neatly with national tech‑competition narratives. Organizations like FASEB argue that proposed budgets for the Department of Energy’s Office of Science still fall short of what is needed to upgrade facilities and sustain emerging areas such as quantum science and AI research infrastructure.

As federal support wobbles, more attention is turning to philanthropy, industry, and venture capital. New programs from venture firms now fund scientists earlier, offering small grants and mentorship, and some tech‑focused initiatives support startups in areas like microreactors, AI, and advanced manufacturing. Universities are also looking to partnerships and philanthropy to keep labs running when federal lines are cut.

Yet research leaders emphasize that private capital rarely invests in slow, uncertain, basic science at the scale government can. Federal agencies remain irreplaceable for high‑risk projects whose payoffs may be decades away and not easily captured by a single company. Without stable public funding, many of the discoveries that underpin future industries—like past advances in the internet, GPS, or mRNA vaccines—might never get off the ground.

Funding policy now shapes not just projects, but people’s lives. With U.S. grants canceled or delayed, some scientists are considering or taking positions in countries that are using policy and funding packages to actively recruit talent. The European Union’s new initiatives, including a multiyear program pledging hundreds of millions of euros to attract researchers, signal a global competition to become the safest “home base” for science careers.

Inside the U.S., the pain is uneven. Well‑resourced private universities can lean on donors, while public midsize institutions—often educating more diverse and first‑generation students—are hit hardest by federal cuts. That raises a long‑term equity question: who gets to participate in science at all when policy choices shrink opportunities at the institutions that serve underrepresented groups?