The Trump Administration’s slashing of indirect costs for federal grants for university-based research to a maximum of 15% may especially threaten STEM research and academic departments. It may drive many foreign-born research and faculty in STEM to go to another country.
About 45% of STEM Masters and 46% of STEM PhDs awarded by US institutions go to international students on temporary visas. 29% of full-time science and engineering faculty in U.S. universities are foreign-born. 49% of U.S.-trained postdocs were born overseas.
Steve Hsu (@hsu_steve) writes on X: The [indirect cost] cuts will harm overall university budgets, but the main harm will be to very expensive STEM activities on campus, which require large IC charges to fund.
Building new labs, renovating old labs, hiring staff to deal with real regulatory and compliance requirements, etc. all require additional funds from ICs. Existing grants do not cover any of these costs which are very large and very real….Overall this is a huge win for China because the appeal of working as a scientist at a US university is significantly diminished as the available resources decrease.
Here is an article saying that direct costs are immune from Executive Branch interference.