It doesn’t mention another big reason for this, which is major funding uncertainties and lower grad school admissions because of this. Most of the major universities I know of are admitting 20-50% of their normal grad student class size this year because of all the funding interference by the Trump administration. The figure I last saw two months ago, the NSF is only handing out ~25% of the grant money in 2026 than they had by that time of year in earlier 2020s. NASA has had its budget completely uncertain for most of 2025 because of the funding debates in congress, so they did not give out their usual academic grants and the system still hasn’t gotten back to normal after that. Additionally, most of the grant calls have had requisite AI use added on in their requirements and NASA is having pressure on changing their grant and contracting rules to try to hand over more of this money to SpaceX and AI companies. So the situation for academic research is way worse than you would think just looking at any top level budget cuts that would have to get through congress.
It doesn’t mention another big reason for this, which is major funding uncertainties and lower grad school admissions because of this. Most of the major universities I know of are admitting 20-50% of their normal grad student class size this year because of all the funding interference by the Trump administration. The figure I last saw two months ago, the NSF is only handing out ~25% of the grant money in 2026 than they had by that time of year in earlier 2020s. NASA has had its budget completely uncertain for most of 2025 because of the funding debates in congress, so they did not give out their usual academic grants and the system still hasn’t gotten back to normal after that. Additionally, most of the grant calls have had requisite AI use added on in their requirements and NASA is having pressure on changing their grant and contracting rules to try to hand over more of this money to SpaceX and AI companies. So the situation for academic research is way worse than you would think just looking at any top level budget cuts that would have to get through congress.