NSF slashes prestigious PhD fellowship awards by half

Every April, the US Nationwide Science Basis (NSF) gives a cohort of round 2,000 promising younger researchers a prestigious fellowship to help their careers in science. Yesterday, the company, which is a significant funder of primary science, introduced that it’s awarding only one,000 fellowships — slashing the cohort by half.

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The NSF Graduate Analysis Fellowship Program (GRFP) selectively gives five-year awards to college students pursuing grasp’s and PhD levels within the sciences. Solely about 16% of the greater than 13,000 candidates are often profitable. Fellows obtain an annual stipend of US$37,000 plus protection of their tuition. The GRFP is likely one of the longest working programmes to fill the worldwide pipeline of science expertise: since 1952, it has funded greater than 75,000 younger researchers. The programme’s purpose, based on its web site earlier than US President Donald Trump took workplace, was to “guarantee the standard, vitality, and variety of the scientific and engineering workforce”. A new version of the website replaces “range” — a precedence the Trump administration has sought to eradicate — with “power”.

This reduce to the GRFP is “a heartbreaker”, says Rob Denton, a biologist at Marian College in Indianapolis, Indiana, who has beforehand reviewed GRFP purposes. Lots of the candidates are susceptible as a result of they’re simply beginning their careers, he says, and receiving this award “might be the distinction between them staying in science or discovering one other profession”.

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The cuts to the GRFP add to the headwinds that the Trump administration has been stirring up for young scientists. Beneath Trump, US funding businesses have been reducing energetic analysis grants — many of them training grants for college kids and postdocs — because it seeks to cut back US authorities spending. In response to funding uncertainty, some universities have curtailed PhD admissions, and the Nationwide Institutes of Well being, the world’s largest biomedical analysis funder, has additionally cancelled a summer season programme for undergraduate college students.

The NSF’s means to manage awards might quickly be diminished — a doable purpose for slashing the fellowships: The Washington Put up reported in March that an inner White Home doc indicated the company would quickly face a discount in its workers headcount of 28%. Chopping the GRFP to economize is “boneheaded”, says Kenny Evans, a science-policy specialist at Rice College in Houston, Texas. “GRFPs are one of the vital cost-effective methods for NSF to offer out cash,” he says, as a result of the end result is a educated, promising younger scientist and it’s comparatively cheap.

An NSF spokesperson declined to touch upon the cuts to GRFP, however mentioned that the company is dedicated to preserving funding at ranges promised to new and present GRFP awardees. “A subsequent announcement of extra awardees is feasible topic to future resourcing concerns,” the spokesperson additionally famous.

Utility ambiguity

This 12 months’s cuts to the programme mark a pointy decline from a report excessive 2,555 fellowship gives in 2023. For 15 years, the variety of scientists chosen for fellowships has remained comparatively steady; the final time the NSF gave fewer than 1,000 gives was in 2008 (see ‘Early-career cuts’).

Along with the 1,000 fellowships, the NSF additionally named a report 3,018 candidates as honourable mentions — an award that doesn’t present funding however that younger researchers can placed on their résumés to spice up their standing. The excessive variety of honourable mentions are an indication that there have been way more worthy candidates than might be awarded fellowships, Evans says.