American universities are where people go to learn and teach. They're also where research and development happens. Over the past eight decades, universities have received billions in federal dollars to help that happen. Those dollars have contributed to innovations like: Drone technology. Inhalable Covid vaccines. Google search code.The Trump administration is cutting or threatening to cut federal funding for research. Federal funding for all kinds of science is at its lowest level in decades.Today on the show: when did the government start funding research at universities? And will massive cuts mean the end of universities as we know them?We hear from the man who first pushed the government to fund university research and we talk to the chancellor of a big research school, Washington University in St. Louis. He opens up his books to show us how his school gets funded and what it would mean if that funding went away.This episode is part of our series Pax Americana, about how the Trump administration and others are challenging a set of post-World War II policies that placed the U.S. at the center of the economic universe. Listen to our episode about the reign of the dollar.Find more Planet Money: Facebook / Instagram / TikTok / Our weekly Newsletter.Listen free at these links: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, the NPR app or anywhere you get podcasts.Help support Planet Money and hear our bonus episodes by subscribing to Planet Money+ in Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org/planetmoney.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
Chapter 1: Why does the government fund research at universities?
This is Planet Money from NPR. Mike Mears is a biologist and an assistant professor at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. He runs his own lab. Does everybody wear a white lab coat?
Yeah. If EH&S is listening, yes, everyone's wearing a lab coat.
Okay. He studies how our DNA influences diseases like cancer. And he's been doing pretty great. But lately, university life has been...
We talked about it in a language I don't usually speak. Is there an emoji that best represents how you felt the last few months?
It's shifted. I think in like early February, it was like the panic emoji.
Mike is one of thousands of researchers all around the country who are suddenly at risk of losing their jobs because the Trump administration is cutting or threatening to cut funding for their research. In some cases, huge pieces of it.
The thought of those cuts is panic emoji, crying emoji, or I don't know, poop emoji.
You could work that one in there too, yeah.
If you can't tell, neither one of us is super emoji literate.
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Chapter 2: How have federal funding cuts affected researchers?
I don't know what Washington University is going to look like in six or 12 months. And I think as we think about higher education systemically, we have the same concerns.
Has there ever been a time when this relationship between the federal government and the university has felt so fraught?
Not in my lifetime.
Now, a university is two big things. One, a place where people go to learn, but also it's a research incubator. And the system we have where universities get tons of federal funding has been in place for the last eight decades.
Universities and the federal government entered into an agreement right after World War II. And the purpose was to build the very best scientific research engine in the world. And we did it. And we're concerned that some of the actions that are being taken are going to destroy something incredible that we've built together since the end of World War II.
That story of how we got the system we have today began with this guy named Vannevar Bush.
Vannevar was the first presidential science advisor. He ran the Office of Scientific Research and Development during the war.
The first project that he got famous for is now infamous. He decided to bring some of the best scientific researchers in the country together to develop weapons, specifically a bomb that would be so ferocious no country would ever attack the U.S. again.
That endeavor is not so fondly remembered as the Manhattan Project. And though that project itself was controversial, it threw a spotlight on the power of research. So after the war ended, Vannevar was like, federal government, what else could we develop if we threw some money at the great minds at all these universities? Let's do it. Let's start funding research at universities.
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