Casualties of Trump’s War on Higher Ed

0:00I'm Aisha Roscoe, and this is a Sunday Story where we go beyond the news of the day to bring you one big story. Today, we're looking at higher education. This is something the president has been focusing on, too. We spend more money on higher education than any other country, and yet they're turning our students into communists and terrorists and sympathizers of many, many different dimensions. President Trump's complained a lot about biased teaching agendas at some universities. He's criticized the teaching of critical race theory and what he calls gender ideology. And he's argued that colleges push anti-American views.

0:41He's also complained about the treatment of Jewish students on some campuses. Here's Trump at an event in Las Vegas in 2024. Colleges will and must end the anti-Semitic propaganda or they will lose their accreditation and federal support. No money will go to them if they don't. And the threat to choke off money has quickly turned real. Since January, the Trump administration has withheld billions of dollars in research funding to colleges and universities across the country. The administration has also focused its attention on international students, clamping down on student visas and in some cases suspending entry as another way to strike at university enrollment and revenue.

1:31It's left university leaders scrambling to plan for the future. NPR correspondent Elissa Nadwerny has been following the impact of these changes on American campuses and beyond. Today on The Sunday Story, we'll talk about what she's been seeing and hearing. Stay with us.

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3:19This American Life. This is a Sunday Story. I'm Aisha Roscoe, joined today by NPR correspondent Alyssa Nadwerney. Hi, Alyssa. Hey, Aisha. Thanks for having me. So it's a new school year. I mean, we're in it. You know, all the kids are back in school. If you're in college, fall semester is underway. Yeah. And Alyssa, as a reporter covering higher ed, I can imagine you've been pretty busy. I sure have. So what have you been seeing and hearing on campuses? Well, I started the school year at the University at Buffalo, which is a large public university with about 30 ,000 students. And like a lot of large public universities across the country, they have a substantial number of international students.

4:09So in a typical year, they make up about 20 % of the student body there. And the school is really close to the Canadian border, but actually a lot of their international students come from India and China. But also all over, they have about 100 countries represented in their freshman class. So I went there for international student orientation, which happened a week before classes started. My name is Priyota, and I'm from Bangladesh. I'm Karshati, and I'm from India. My name is Rebecca and I'm from Jamaica. I'm Minjae from Seoul, South Korea. So students from all over the world finally get to be on campus.

4:47They were mapping out their classes, meeting their roommates, getting their student IDs. So just smile. I'm going to take it on three. One, two, three. There were a lot of nerves and energy and excitement. But honestly, after such a rocky summer with all the changes and delays to student visas, there was also a lot of relief, Aisha. I mean, students were so grateful to have made it to campus, and they told me how stressful it was this summer to get visas. At least we're here. For me, the main thing is that I got here. I talked with Daria Tofan from Romania. I met her and Karshadi Gugward from Pune, India, at an icebreaker event.

5:29Was the visa process hard? No, don't ask me about it. It was awful. No, it was. Uncertainty is crazy. They shut down the embassies. I just prayed so hard to God. I was like, this is the time. When did you have the interview? I mean, that sounds really stressful. And why has it been so hard for them to get in? Yeah, well, over the last six months, the Trump administration has really tightened their grip on international student visas, citing national security and foreign policy concerns. They say they want to keep campuses safe. In early summer, embassies and consulates temporarily paused visa interviews around the world, and that's a time when a lot of students would be getting their visas in time to start fall semester.

6:18The State Department also revamped the student visa application and interview process, bringing additional scrutiny to the vetting system. So that has meant there's more denials and difficulty getting visa interviews and, of course, like a ton of anxiety for accepted students. Because you can't even register for classes unless you have your immigration documents. What's your name? I spoke to Shivika Singh from New Delhi about this. She's a freshman about to study psychology. And when she first got accepted to Buffalo, she joined a group chat of other students from India. And a lot of those students from the chat, she says, couldn't get the visa appointments in time.

6:58And so they weren't at orientation with her. Most of them are now transferring to UK because of the visa situation. But some are still waiting for the spring semester. I guess, like, you know, given all of these recent hardships and the rhetoric from the current administration, why do international students still want to come here? Well, even with the barriers, the students I talked to at Buffalo told me they still highly value a U.S. college degree. Here's Shivika again. I only had one goal from the beginning. It was to go to college here. So if I didn't reach that goal, it would have been very painful.

7:42I spoke to University at Buffalo Provost Scott Weber, and he told me they've been seeing a lot of deferrals. So students are waiting to start a semester later in the spring. We take that as a very positive sign that the value of higher education in the United States is still seen as incredibly strong and that we offer very strong academic programs for them to pursue and that they're eager to continue that pursuit. But the university is expecting a decline this fall of about 750 international students. That's down by about 15 percent. And the drop is mostly in graduate programs and in STEM fields.

8:19And Weber told me that it is a big financial hit for the school because international students often pay full tuition, and that revenue is essential to the overall financial bottom line of the university. This has meant that they've had to focus on other ways to boost enrollment. So Weber told me they've upped their acceptance of domestic students. They actually admitted their largest freshman class to date this fall. Well, that seems like something that, you know, people could view as a good thing for U.S. students who want to attend the school or parents who want to send their kids to these schools.

8:53Yeah, that's a really good point. I mean, President Trump and other conservative voices have accused international students of taking university spots that could go to American citizens. And I put this question to Weber, and he denied this. He says at least at Buffalo, there is room for everyone at his university. I would assure you that our international students do not take spots for other students who are qualified to attend and would be successful here. So Aisha, this trend of enrollment chaos, it's playing out all over from Arizona to Massachusetts. Universities are expecting similar drops in international enrollment this fall.

9:32So what are you hearing about how long this trend is going to last? Like, is this just a blip? And I mean, and even though, you know, we heard from those students who got in, I mean, there are a lot of international students who are not looking at the U.S. right now because of the visa issues and immigration crackdowns. Yeah. I mean, they're scared. What would that mean for the U.S. to have less international students? Yeah, well, last year, more than a million international students studied in the U.S., so it would mean a lot. I mean, they contribute about$43 billion to the U.S. economy. And the thing is, when they come for undergrad, they often stay for graduate programs and then postdoc research, and they get jobs, you know, so there is a big economic impact.

10:25I talked with Fanta Awe. She leads the organization called the Association of International Educators, or NAFSA. A's organization predicts that there's going to be a national drop in new international students this fall, and it's going to hurt local economies. So the loss of international students will lead to really a significant downturn in innovation and entrepreneurship for the United States, which will have long-term impact. This will affect communities large and small. The organization published a report in July that suggested that local economies could lose as much as$7 billion in spending and more than 60 ,000 jobs.

11:06Now, the administration has sent a number of signals that they want to limit international students, which could potentially mean that this could be long-term for colleges. But Trump does seem to be paying attention to the fact that the numbers this fall are down and that that could have an economic impact. About a month after that report came out, he signaled a shift on international students, telling reporters that he planned to double the amount of Chinese students studying in the U.S. I like that their students come here. I like that other country students come here. And you know what would happen if they didn't?

11:41Our college system would go to hell very quickly. Now, I have been talking with dozens of college presidents who tell me that this is just one of the many challenges that they're facing right now as the school year begins. I mean, they're experiencing, honestly, a financial firestorm. There's layoffs, there's a lot of panic among faculty. They have to make budgets work. I mean, Northwestern University in Chicago laid off more than 500 people about a month ago. Boston University laid off more than 100 staffers amid budget challenges. And this is all happening in the face of these huge federal funding cuts, too.

12:21When we come back, we'll take a closer look at these funding cuts and how they're affecting people far away from university campuses.

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13:55Alyssa, I don't think that most people, and certainly I didn't, realize just how much money the federal government gives to universities in the form of these research grants. Can you talk about this massive system of grant giving? Yeah. Well, it mostly started after World War II when the federal government essentially invested and deeply entrusted universities to conduct research and development. So I talked with Shailen Jotishi. He's the managing director of the Future of Work and Innovation Economy Initiative at New America, a left-leaning think tank about this. The government-university-industry partnership for R &D built the American economy in the 20th century.

14:40Everything from the iPhone to GPS technology to fortified vitamin D has had its roots in federally funded research. I mean, I didn't know that. I thought it was like the military. So think about like the iPhone, the technology that helped create the iPhone. It was based on research that MIT did on semiconductors, which essentially like power everything we do. In 2021 alone, the federal government gave colleges and universities about$180 billion across dozens of federal agencies, according to the Government Accountability Office. Now, Trump understands the power of that funding as leverage. The reason is there really isn't an alternative way to fund this work.

15:25It's just too much money. There are too many unknowns and output for a private company or even an industry to take on those kinds of risks. Now, in the last six months, Trump has sought change at universities by canceling more than$10 billion in federal research grants at dozens of universities in nearly every subject and discipline, from farming to cybersecurity to diabetes research. And it's affected a bunch of different institutions. Large public colleges, small elite colleges. I mean, Aisha, we are talking about cancer research, research in new wearable technology, farming solutions, early childhood development, domestic violence research.

16:09It has hit nearly every discipline and subject. So what is the justification that the White House gives for pulling all of these funds? Well, they frame this as a fight for civil rights. So in letters and documents, the government has accused universities of things like liberal bias, of considering race and admissions policies, which is illegal following a Supreme Court decision. But the largest justification is combating anti-Semitism on campus. So in the wake of October 7th attacks on Israel and then the subsequent bombardment on Gaza, there were a lot of pro-Palestinian protests at universities.

16:50And sometimes that came with angry rhetoric towards Israel and in some cases Jewish students on campus were harassed. And that helped spark this focus on anti-Semitism within the administration. And so most of these canceled grants stem from what the administration says were inept responses from universities to curb discrimination on campus. Now, critics of the administration say that this is simply a pretext, that the administration just wanted reasons to crack down on colleges, particularly elite ones. And researchers I've talked to tell me they don't see the link between what they're working on, like medical research, and accusations of campus wokeness or anti-Semitism.

17:30We feel like collateral damage. I talked with Dr. Jim Antaki, who is a biomedical engineer at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. There was a sweeping punishment put upon the university, and it was across the board indiscriminately. There's just no reason to punish us. We're trying to do good in the world. I'm guessing he's one of the researchers whose federal grant was cut. Yeah, he's working on designing an artificial heart for infants and toddlers. But this spring, the Department of Defense canceled his more than$6 million multi-year grant to make a pediatric heart pump. So Dr. Antaki was in the final stages of research and manufacturing before it went to clinical trials.

18:16And while he's desperately trying to find other funding resources, his lab has had to stop all work. And then his key technician on the project was laid off by Cornell. So we're sitting on our hands and biting our nails. I'm seeing before my eyes the contraction of our lab and perhaps the end of the road for the pediatric heart pump project. It's heartbreaking and it's frustrating. I carry in my pocket the prototype of the baby pump. And it's like my security blanket. It's about the size of a AA battery, and it's so close to being used to save lives and children. So who's going to suffer from this?

19:01Is there a large population of people that need this device? Well, about 1 in 100 babies in the U.S. are born with a congenital heart defect, and there's no artificial heart designed for babies or young kids. The FDA even identified this as an area of critical medical device need. And that's like what motivates Dr. Antaki. You know, he has been working on this research his whole career. The current technology involves pumps that are outside the body and are really only useful for short periods of time. This device will be implanted inside the body, most likely like under the diaphragm, like in the stomach area.

19:46Right now, patients get this external device, could be in the hospital for months. And just the anguish that the families go through is just unimaginable. I mean, we're talking about babies and toddlers. I mean, that's just the most vulnerable population. Yeah. And it's really tough for the families. I went to Children's Hospital of Philadelphia to meet one of those families who's going through kind of this unimaginable time. They have a child on a VAD, which is an artificial heart. Mom, what does VAD stand for? Oh, well, how many, what type of heart do you have? Same ventricle. Yeah, and what, how many ventricles does a typical heart have?

20:38Two. That's right. That's Nora Strickland and her son Caleb, who's four. He was born with a congenital heart defect, and when he was really little, he had three open-heart surgeries to repair his heart, so that by his fourth birthday, he was actually living the life of a pretty normal kid. C-A-L-E and then B. So what does that spell? Caleb. I made my name? You made your name. I made my name. But last spring, a virus sent his already weak heart into failure, and he spent the last three months at the hospital with an artificial heart pump. It's keeping him alive while he waits for a transplant, but it's pretty limiting.

21:25Lift me up. Lift you up? Okay. Actually, I'm pretty heavy. You are? Yeah. Okay. Here, why don't you sit on my knee? The artificial heart device is filled with blood, and it hangs from Caleb's skinny little frame. I don't know. The iKiss driver, which powers the device, is on wheels, and it weighs about 300 pounds and can only be unplugged for about 30 minutes. I'm going to unplug Taco. Caleb nicknamed his heart pump Taco, and when he goes down to the hall to the playroom, he basically has 20 minutes to get himself plugged back in. The wheeled pole with all his blood thinning medicine, that one also comes along.

22:05You're going to have to push broccoli. It's called broccoli. Basically, he named all the things that helped keep him alive. So his heart pump is Taco, his VAD is Henry, after his favorite train character on Thomas the Tank Engine, and he named that wheeled pole with all the blunt-thitting medicine broccoli. And we're taking all three of them with us? We have two kids, look, they're connected to me. See, they're connected to me. This is my VAD, and it helps my heart. Let's go! I mean, you know, it's so hard to hear Caleb because he's just a kid. And it's so unfair what he is going through. Yeah.

22:53Listening to, like, Caleb and his mom, it just seems so far away from the idea of, like, college and research funding cuts and all of that. But they are still being impacted directly by those decisions and those policies that they have no control over. Yeah, absolutely. The stakes of this research affect real people all over the country, just like Caleb and his family. It could be worse. It could be worse. It could be worse, Mom. It could always be worse, Ben. But then, you know, later Nora told me, like, it could also be better. She took a leave of absence from her job and spends her days at the hospital with Caleb.

23:36She says, you know, if Caleb could have a portable implant. Caleb could go to the playground. He'd be home and he'd be out and about. He wouldn't need to be plugged into a wall and he wouldn't be tethered. How has the administration responded to the concerns from Dr. Antaki and Caleb's mom that these cuts could harm the health of American kids. When asked about why Dr. Antaki's research was canceled, the grant officer at the DOD said in an email that it was, quote, at the direction of the administration and provided no further details. Now, this summer, the FDA added pediatric ventricular assist devices to their medical device shortage list.

24:19But when I reached out to the Department of Health and Human Services about this irony, canceling a grant focused on developing just that, they didn't have a comment on that. They did say, quote, ensuring the public has access to safe and effective medical devices is a top priority for the FDA. So what's the outlook for Dr. Antaki and his lab? Well, one hope is that the university makes a deal with the Trump administration, and then that gets this funding for Dr. Antaki and hundreds of other Cornell researchers to be reinstated. And there has been a roadmap for this. So far, both Columbia University and Brown University have agreed to deals to restore research funding.

25:04Columbia went first. They agreed to pay$200 million over three years to the federal government. It's basically money that goes to the Treasury, like into the general fund. So it's actually not clear what that money is going to be used for. They also agreed to take steps to curb anti-Semitism on campus and to share data related to admissions, among other things. And in return, the government said it would restore access to about$1.3 billion in federal funding for Columbia. That amount includes resuming frozen grants and opening up opportunities for future research. And then the second school to make a deal, Brown University, they essentially looked at what Columbia did and they tried to get a better deal.

25:50So in order to restore more than$50 million in unpaid federal grants and allow them to be eligible for future grants, Brown agreed to pay that same amount,$50 million, over 10 years. And instead of paying the federal government, they agreed to give that money to workforce development organizations in Rhode Island. And the details about those organizations have not been made public yet. Brown says they're still working to identify all the grantees of that money. So now, Aisha, I am kind of watching to see what other universities agree to. I mean, Trump has said he wants to put more money into vocational and trade programs.

26:28So these deals, these future deals with colleges could be a way to get universities to fund that.

26:38So Trump and his allies are framing this as kind of like the elite colleges, the big research universities versus, you know, the smaller vocational schools or community colleges. Does that hold up, you know, upon scrutiny? Well, it's a really interesting question because most American college students actually attend community colleges and regional four-year public universities. And those are the places that educate students on trades. And yet, taxing Harvard or canceling research grants at Cornell, that doesn't mean that that money is being redistributed to schools that teach trades. And so while Trump's idea to fund trade schools is perhaps an idea that people across the country and across the aisle could really agree on, a lot of higher ed leaders I've talked to aren't convinced that this administration's approach is actually the way to do that.