A lot has changed in higher education since President Trump took office. This week on The Sunday Story, Ayesha reflects on her own college graduation, and she sits down with three graduating college seniors. They talk about how funding cuts have upended their postgrad plans and how the last semester has made them think differently about what college is all about.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
Chapter 1: What challenges are graduating seniors facing in 2025?
I'm Ayesha Roscoe, and you're listening to The Sunday Story, where we go beyond the news to bring you one big story. A few weeks before graduating from Duke Kunshan University, senior Liam Powell received a letter he'd been anticipating from the U.S. State Department.
Chapter 2: How did a hiring freeze impact student internships?
Dear William N. Powell, thank you for your interest in an internship with the U.S. Department of State.
Liam was a global health major and he'd interned at the United States Agency for International Development or USAID. So when he saw there was an internship with the State Department, he applied and he was chosen. But then came a federal hiring freeze.
we regret to inform you that the U.S. Department of State has canceled the summer 2025 cycle of the student internship program. In accordance with the president's executive order entitled Hiring Freeze and the Office of Management and Budget and Office of Personnel Management's joint memorandum, the department hereby rescinds your tentative offer to participate in the student internship program.
We wish you success in your academic career. The email came to me March 14th this year, so pretty far down the line after the hiring freeze.
A couple of weeks ago, he walked across the stage at his graduation. As the class of 2025 celebrate their achievements so far, many like Liam are grappling with the question of what next? And that's the way it is with graduations, right? No one knows what is to come. Graduation season, it's a celebration. It's a time of optimism.
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Chapter 3: What emotions come with graduation and uncertainty?
And you know, it makes me feel nostalgic for my own college graduation from Howard University. You know, you're thinking like of all the people who've come before you, and you are now a part of this long line of alumni. And so it's almost like you're being baptized into this new part of your life. As a person, I was not ready to be on my own. I wasn't prepared or I didn't think I was prepared.
But what I had learned in college, the seeds that were planted in me in college, they would bloom. And the woman that you see before you today or that you hear today, her voice was developed on that college campus. Now, I'm going someplace with this. I've been thinking about that younger Aisha because I recently talked to some graduating seniors who are in that same place.
At the same time, a lot has changed in higher education in the last several months. It seems like every time you turn on the news, there's a headline about how universities are being affected by the decisions of the federal government.
The Supreme Court recently cleared the way for the Trump administration to cancel roughly $65 million in federal education grants linked to diversity, equity and inclusion. This morning, the Trump administration has revoked the visas of 18 students at FIU.
Chapter 4: How have higher education changes affected students?
Columbia University announced today is laying off 180 staff members working on research funded by federal grants after the Trump administration announced its intent to cut the university's funding.
I wanted to hear about their fears and hopes for the future, so I sat down with them.
My name is Liam Powell.
Liam Powell, who we just heard, a recent graduate of Duke Kunshan University.
I'm Melissa Johnson. I am a senior at Purdue University studying wildlife.
My name is Bobby McAlpine, and I am the current sitting student body president at The Ohio State University.
I felt inspired by these students and their sense of clarity and purpose as they consider the world that they're about to head out into and their determination and courage to find new paths for their lives. Our conversation after the break.
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Chapter 5: What are the current campus morale and student sentiments?
I can imagine at a big state university, the importance of finding people in the staff and professors who care about you and connect with you, who make you feel like family and not just a number. And it sounds like for Bobby, that is what the DEI office did. And I'm sure he wasn't alone in that. There was something else I wanted to know. How were they making sense of the funding cuts?
And how were they adjusting to these curveballs that have now been thrown at them? Alyssa, you're having a hard time finding work in the wildlife space that you wanted to do your research on.
Yeah, so originally I was going to pursue a PhD in amphibian disease ecology. So I have been researching how contaminants affect amphibians and their disease dynamics for the past four years. So I was going to continue that work.
At this time was when a lot of like the federal funding cuts towards academic institutions were going through and the funding cuts from the National Science Foundation were happening. And so graduate admissions across the whole entire country have gone to a very low point because universities and institutions and professors need to protect the people they already have.
So they're not really letting a lot of people in.
Do you think it was your particular field of study that made it harder for you to get chosen? Or do you think it was just overall because of the funding cuts, as you said, they just had to pick less people?
The research that I was doing, there were some concerns about the funding source because it had both climate and diversity in the title.
Yeah, it's related to like diversity of the species.
Yeah. This is quite a strange thing that's going on with the National Science Foundation and like Doge, the Department of Government Efficiency, is that they're using either people who maybe don't have a lot of expertise towards reviewing these grants and understanding the scientific terms behind them to screen through the names of grants for words like diversity, equity, climate change. And so
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Chapter 6: How are funding cuts impacting academic paths?
Honestly, Alyssa, that is exactly what so many students are feeling. Where we get our funding as a university, especially coming from a public university like I am, it never really crossed students' minds. At the end of the day, it's forcing a lot of students to really look at how all of these universities are funded. How can we make sure that they continue to be funded?
There is some positive in it because it's forcing so many students to form our opinions and form how we want our government to work in the future.
Yeah. I mean, you hear a lot of, I'm so overwhelmed right now. I feel so depressed. I feel so horrified by what's going on. I just don't know what to do. I'm just going to delete Instagram or I'm just going to delete my news apps.
And I feel like one thing that I've been trying to do and that I feel like a lot of young people are starting to shift towards is this is so horrifying and it is so scary and it is so frustrating and it makes me so angry, but I can't look away.
Silence is not an option anymore.
Exactly.
It really isn't.
I feel like a lot of the actions that are happening are sort of trying to isolate us and make us feel small. But that's really not the case because we're all going through such similar things and we have to work together for change and just like for, I don't know, for something better than this to happen.
You know, it feels like what I'm hearing you saying is that these interruptions to your future plans have actually made you more politically aware than you might have been otherwise. So I got to ask all of you, how are you feeling about the future? It sounds like you're saying that you're motivated. That's what it sounded like to me.
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