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The Big Ugly Bill Cuts National Science Foundation Budget By More Than Half [1]

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Date: 2025-06-01

The Big Ugly Bill (BUB) proposes to reduce the budget of the National Science Foundation by over 50% — $9B down to $4B. There are cuts to scientific research throughout government — NSF is just one element of that catastrophe — but there are some unique aspects to NSF-funded research. This may have been covered in other diaries, but I contribute my own take on it. As a computer science professor, it directly affects me, the post-docs and graduate students that I mentor, and my overall research program. (The cuts to computer science research will actually be about 65%.)

I don’t need to convince anyone here about how horrible the BUB is, but I have to get this off my chest. Hopefully this information will be useful in discussions about the BUB with friends/family/your congressional delegates.

Some lowlights of the proposed budget (taken from nsf-gov-resources.nsf.gov/...)

Comparison of 2024 and 2026 for NSF 2024 2026 Senior Researchers 60,400 16,900 Post-Doctoral Reseachers 14,400 4,100 Graduate Students 41,500 12,400 Number of Proposals 36,700 33,000 Funding Rate 26% 7% Median Award Size $160,400 $201,700 Total Budget (not including CHIPS) $9,060M $3,903M Indirect Cost Rate 55%(*) 15% CHIPS $25M $50M

Let’s be clear about this. This isn’t a 55% haircut, as bad as that would be. It’s existential. It is the end of NSF-supported research (which accounts for about 25% of basic research in the US).

What the 2026 budget really means to a senior researcher:

The “senior researchers” supported by NSF are, by and large, university professors. NSF supports their research programs, which include graduate students and post-docs. Not only does NSF support the research itself, but through the research it supports training of the next generation of scientists and engineers. It keeps the body of scientific knowledge vital and provides for its continuity.

Professors rely on grants for ¼ of their salaries — three months worth. Professors are on 9-month contracts. To get a full 12 months of pay — which still won’t be competitive with industrial salaries — one needs to come up with summer support in the form of research grants.

An award of $200k/year (the median award amount in the 2026 budget) is actually pretty small. Two months of salary (the max allowed by NSF) and benefits for a mid-career computer science professor is around $50k (assuming a 15% indirect cost rate). Twelve months of salary, benefits, and tuition for a graduate research assistant is around $90k. The remaining $60k can be used for supporting part of another graduate student, travel, misc expenses.

The cost/benefit analysis under the proposed budget makes no sense. No one is going to participate in this kind of system (I won’t). A 7% funding rate means a senior researcher will have to write 15 grant proposals in order to get one award — 5 per year. The expected outcome for a $200k award (less the 15% indirect costs) comes out to $12k/year or $1k/month. It’s just not going to be worth it to be a professor at a US university.

Universities are unlikely to even allow research proposals to be submitted if the indirect cost rate is 15% and the expected rate of success is 7%. My current institution (like many others) is not allowing submissions. It will cost much more to apply for, and to administer, a grant than the grant would pay.

Finally, many NSF program officers are senior researchers with short-term (3 year) rotations at NSF who want to make an impact on science and technology by setting research directions for entire communities. Without senior leadership provided by rotators and by permanent NSF staff, even what little funding there is will have no meaningful direction.

The consequences:

The loss of our teaching and research edge. With a few exceptions (Oxford, Cambridge, ETH Zurich), all of the top universities in the world are in the US. The drastic reduction in senior researchers, post-docs, and graduate students (coupled with all of the other assaults the trump maladministration is making on universities) will mean a brain drain and the end of US academic leadership.

The loss of our technological edge. Technologies such as AI, quantum computing, and fusion energy (not to mention climate change) are going to radically transform our world. We need to be able to fully participate in, and lead, research and development in these areas. It is not an overstatement to say that society, even life on this planet, depends on it.

The loss of our innovation edge. Silicon Valley (indeed, all tech startups) depend on a well-educated workforce. Research and education at a university are tightly coupled. Losing senior researchers (professors) also means that classroom education will be devastated.

The loss of our national security edge. Our national security depends on advanced technologies, both for direct military use (weapons) as well as for intelligence gathering. Inferior science and engineering means inferior national security.

The loss of scientific knowledge. In addition to the economic benefits, there is value in science and engineering for their own sake.

And on and on.

The situation is dire and huge damage has already been done. If you have the bandwidth, please consider adding this to the set of topics you advocate for (e.g., when you contact your congressional delegation).

In answer to some anticipated questions. Yes, CHIPS funding goes up. Even though trump told the squeaker of the house to end the CHIPS act, Todd Young was one of the sponsors of it, and one of two senators who did not endorse trump in the most recent election. I am 100% sure that the increased CHIPS funding was to buy his vote.

There are of course other sources of funding available to senior researchers, including the Department of Energy and the Department of Defense. However, those sources tend to be “mission oriented”, meaning shorter term and development focused, rather than for open-ended scientific inquiry. There is also NIH, of course. But all funding sources are being decimated and would not be able to make up for the loss of NSF funding at any rate.

The cost of graduate students can vary greatly from university to university. The pay can range from poverty level to something approaching a (low) living wage. At my institution, a grad student stipend is about $50k (plus benefits) and in-state tuition is about $20k. Out-of-state tuition — which foreign graduate students pay — is more than $40k. Some universities will use tuition as an in-kind contribution and charge all, some, or none of the tuition to a grant. I assumed tuition of $20k.

(*) Each university negotiates its own indirect cost rate with NSF. But the rate tends to be in the 55% range.

Your mileage may vary. This diary is based on my personal experience of 30 years spent doing scientific research, and to be totally immodest, successfully ($1M+/year in research funding). Sources have been NSF, DOE, DOD, and industry. As a researcher in one particular area of computer science, I have not had any NIH funding.

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