The Education and Employment Committee has heard Australian National University (ANU) students are forced to sit on the floor in overpacked tutorials as a result of budget cuts in its $250m restructure.
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NIH director Jay Bhattacharya said that among other priorities, the agency will focus on artificial intelligence and “ensuring evidence-based health care for children and teenagers identifying as transgender.”
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The National Institutes of Health’s director ordered employees to “conduct an individualized review of all current and planned research activities,” including active grants and funding opportunity announcements, according to images of a document provided to Inside Higher Ed. The review comes amid concerns that the NIH won’t distribute all of its allocated grant money by the time the federal fiscal year ends Sept. 30, meaning those dollars will return to the U.S. Treasury.
The document images, provided by a source who wished to remain anonymous due to fear of retaliation, show that NIH director Jay Bhattacharya sent the memo Friday and that the review is effective immediately. According to the memo, “relevant NIH personnel” must review grants, funding opportunity announcements, contracts, contract solicitations, applications for new and competing renewal awards, intramural research and research training programs, cooperative agreements, and “other transactions.”
Science reported earlier on the review.
The order is part of a larger memo in which Bhattacharya outlined “select agency priorities” and said projects that don’t align with these priorities may be “restricted, paused, not renewed, or terminated.” The focuses are, among other things, artificial intelligence, “furthering our understanding of autism” and “ensuring evidence-based health care for children and teenagers identifying as transgender.”
In response to a request for an interview about the review and why it’s needed, the NIH press team sent a public statement from Friday, in which Bhattacharya listed the priorities.
Regarding health care for transgender youth, he said, “There are clearly more promising avenues of research that can be taken to improve the health of these populations than to conduct studies that involve the use of puberty suppression, hormone therapy, or surgical intervention.” He says that “by contrast, research that aims to identify and treat the harms these therapies and procedures have potentially caused … and how to best address the needs of these individuals so that they may live long, healthy lives is more promising.”
Bhattacharya’s letter comes after President Trump, earlier this month, ordered senior appointees at federal agencies to annually review discretionary grants “for consistency with agency priorities.”
Joanne Padrón Carney, chief government relations officer for the American Association for the Advancement of Science, said in a statement to Inside Higher Ed that the president’s budget request for fiscal year 2026 already outlined a set priorities for the rest of the current year.
“Switching gears at this stage reinforces confusion, diminishes trust, and increases concerns within the scientific community,” Carney added. “It joins the long list of tactics risking impoundment of congressionally appropriated funds rather than funding biomedical research that is essential for the people’s well-being.”
Nearly three dozen selective colleges are facing an antitrust lawsuit alleging they used the early decision admissions process to reduce competition and inflate prices. Also named as defendants are application platforms Common App and Scoir, as well as the Consortium on Financing Higher Education, an information-sharing coalition of selective liberal arts colleges.
By the numbers
740,000
That’s the estimated number of work hours the higher education sector can expect to add as a result of the U.S. Department of Education’s plan to cull new data from colleges on their applicants’ race and sex. Behind the push is the Trump administration’s hostility toward diversity initiatives and its aggressive approach to enforcing the U.S. Supreme Court’s ban on race-based admissions.
“Our actions clearly demonstrate our commitment to addressing antisemitic actions and promoting an inclusive campus environment by upholding a safe, respectful, and accountable environment.”
George Washington University
The private institution became one of the latest targets of the Trump administration, which claimed the university was indifferent to harassment of Jewish and Israeli students on its Washington, D.C., campus. As with its accusations against a handful of other colleges, the administration cited a pro-Palestinian protest encampment at GWU in spring 2024. The university asked the local police to clear the encampment shortly after it was formed.
The University of Technology Sydney (UTS) has “temporarily suspended” new enrolments to more than 100 bachelor and postgraduate programs, with 400 staff jobs under threat.
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The Fair Work Ombudsman is scrutinising 28 universities in relation to wage underpayments and has recovered $218 million in unpaid wages for over 110,000 employees.
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Vice-chancellor of James Cook University Simon Biggs said artificial intelligence is critical to help young people with companionship and loneliness.
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This article contains information related to suicide some may find distressing.
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Peak higher education bodies have warned a Senate inquiry against counterproductive over-regulation and towards proper university funding ahead of the government’s productivity roundtable.
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The Productivity Commission (PC) has urged the federal government to focus on recognition of prior learning ahead of the Treasurer’s economic roundtable.
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Race Discrimination Commissioner Giridharan Sivaraman said all institutions have a responsibility to stamp out racism in his National Press Club address on Wednesday.
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