Gene editing, mRNA technology for developing vaccines and cognitive behavioral therapy rank among the most recognized scientific discoveries of the past 75 years.
Though separated by space and time, they all rest upon the same keystone: the University of Pennsylvania’s $2 billion research and development program.
Taxpayer-funded federal grants and contracts cover the bulk of the price tag, including $245 million on more than 170 projects during the past five years alone, leaving many insiders concerned about the impact of the Trump administration’s nationwide $1.5 billion cut to academic research funding going forward.
“I think we’re all going to feel the impacts of these cuts for a long time,” said Dr. Julie Margetta Morgan, president of the progressive think tank The Century Foundation, during a June 4 congressional hearing on Capitol Hill about tuition pricing at Ivy League universities. “We’re not going to be developing the drugs that make us safer and healthier in this country. We’re not going to be developing the innovations that help keep us competitive in power manufacturing within our country. So, it’s going to have a really big impact on us as a whole.”
Not everyone agrees with that, however. Dr. J. Scott Turner, director of the Diversity in the Sciences Project of the National Association of Scholars, told The Center Square that analyses of federal grant funding show that allocations have doubled in support roughly every seven years since 1950, when federal dollars began overshadowing philanthropic donations.
Theoretically, Turner said, the anticipated cuts mean researchers would be working with the same level of taxpayer funding doled out in 2017, or $32.4 billion, according to data from the National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics. In 2023, that number hit $49 billion, or about twice what the government spent in 2002. However, half of that additional spending occurred during the last six years alone, in part due to a large pandemic-era stimulus under former President Joe Biden via the CHIPS and Science Act and the Inflation Reduction Act.
“The thing that the Trump administration is doing is challenging some of the assumptions that have prevailed on how the federal government funds university science, challenging assumptions that have sort of been riding along for 75 years now,” Turner said. “It’s time for that to happen, in my view, and I think science will be a lot healthier for it.”
Although more than 1,100 colleges and universities received research and development support in 2023 under the Biden administration, just 20 account for the bulk. Three of the commonwealth’s most public-facing institutions are on that list: Penn State University, the University of Pittsburgh, and the University of Pennsylvania.
The latter two, at $916.7 million and $936.5 million respectively, round out the top 10. But only one, UPenn, is an elite private institution with a checkered history of nebulous spending that’s raised a specter of doubt among lawmakers, academics and the president himself.
In March, the administration froze the university’s funding to the tune of $175 million after it upheld a policy allowing transgender athletes to compete in women’s sports. The move paused work on an untold number of research projects supported by the U.S. Department of Defense and the Department of Health and Human Services.
After multiple attempts, The Center Square was unsuccessful in making contact with the university to discuss its research spending and the impact of the administration’s punitive actions.
However, the development alarmed the academic research community, long accustomed to ideological and corporate pressure on its work, but frightened by the president’s explicit connection in his decision.
“First of all, our institutions of higher learning are places where people come together and learn and have to be in the same place as people with different opinions,” Morgan said during her congressional testimony. “So it really promotes democratic values from the start.”
To maintain that integrity, she said, the universities must continue to be “a place of free inquiry that can result in information that can oppose or point out flaws in larger societal trends or political trends.”
“They’re also places that produce research that can help us better understand what’s happening in the world around us, including what’s happening, the kind of effects of the negative changes that a presidential administration might be putting in place,” she said. “So they’re incredibly important to our democracy and to our society.”
While Morgan asserts that cutting federal support – whether through research, student aid or instituting an endowment tax – would harm that autonomy, Turner argues its federal involvement itself that’s undermined the freedom of scientific development.
He says the modern competitive grant process has fundamentally shifted science away from discovery and into a position where researchers are constantly focused on justifying and funding their work. This puts pressure on university staff to produce, publish and bring in revenue – often for bloated administrative compensation packages.
Current UPenn President Larry Jameson earned $5 million in 2023, according to tax records, when he was still serving as vice president. He took over after former President Liz Magill’s resignation at the end of that same year, who’s base salary was just over $1 million.
Penn State President Neeli Bendapudi and University of Pittsburgh Chancellor Joan Gabel earn $950,000 anually, excluding deferred retention incentives that can push the total well beyond $1 million.
“And universities hold this over scientists’ heads,” Turner said, noting that administrations will withhold tenure and promotions when production doesn’t meet expectations. “So there is this relentless pressure on scientists to produce and the actual science doesn’t matter anymore.”
As one of the nation’s eight Ivy League schools, the University of Pennsylvania’s cachet as a ladder to the upper echelon of society comes at a high cost: tuition has more than doubled over the past 25 years, costing $68,000 annually before tacking on room, board and activity fees.
Then there’s its $22 billion endowment, of which roughly $1.1 billion supports annual university expenses. Some of that includes financial aid to just under half of its 29,000 students, though many still use federal programs, like the Pell Grant and subsidized loans, to finance their degrees.
Those critical of the institutions cite the never-ending supply of federal dollars for spiking tuition costs, loading middle class students down with crippling debt despite growing endowments and other sources of revenue.
Jennica Pounds, widely known by her X handle, @DataRepublican, is a DOGE-style investigator who uses AI technology to mine the inner workings of the U.S. government. Pounds pulled data from the university, as well as at Penn State and Pitt, that backed the theory. In her research, she found that UPenn’s tuition has risen at least 20% since 2016, despite doubling its endowment and collecting millions more taxpayer dollars in research support.
Most research in scientific fields takes years before significant breakthroughs are published and, in most cases, grants awarded since 2020 are still in the earlier stages of development. Ultimately, whether many of the Biden-era grants were worth the price tag to taxpayers won’t be known for perhaps a decade. And even then, it will be a subjective determination.
It also strikes at the heart of critics’ concerns, who say DOGE and the cuts to federal student aid in Congress’s reconciliation bill actually raise tuition costs for all students at all colleges – not just elite universities that can afford to fill the gap.
“As usual, Republicans are pretending to be firefighters when they’re actually arsonists,” said U.S. Rep. Jesus ‘Chuy’ Garcia, a Democrat representing Illinois’s fourth congressional district in Chicago, during the House hearing with Morgan. “We need to address the cost of higher education. But nothing in their cruel reconciliation bill does that. So this hearing is just a hypocritical, hypocritical distraction.”
U.S. Rep. Scott Fitzgerald, a Republican representing Wisconsin’s fifth congressional district, argued that while cars, clothing and televisions have become cheaper over time, thanks to open competition among businesses, college tuition and textbooks have risen in cost by more than 180%.
“Ivy League schools should be competing to offer the best product at the best price possible. Instead, they collude to raise prices and spend their inflated cartel earnings on administrative bloat,” he said. “Today, the cost to attend an Ivy League school can exceed $100,000 per school year. Ever since the Ivy League was established in the 1950s, these schools have been focused on exclusivity, maximizing profits, and artificially inflated prestige rather than expanding access to education and serving students.”
