MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
American universities have long been the envy of the world, attracting students, attracting academic talent from other countries. But the federal government under the Trump administration has cut many millions of dollars in research funding to higher education institutions, and it's looking to cut even more. That funding plays a big role in recruitment, so losing it could change universities as we know them. From the Planet Money podcast, Erika Beras tells us how the federal government came to fund research in the first place.
ERIKA BERAS, BYLINE: The story begins with this guy named Vannevar Bush. He ran the Office of Scientific Research and Development during the war. He was behind the Manhattan Project. Elizabeth Popp Berman, a professor at the University of Michigan, says even though the project was controversial, it threw a spotlight on the power of federally funded research.
ELIZABETH POPP BERMAN: People were like, we should keep doing some of this.
BERAS: He thought the government should invest in scientific research, even before knowing its outcome. And he believed the best place to do that was American universities. He thought that there'd be all these benefits that could help keep the U.S. competitive and they'd train the next generation of scientists.
BERMAN: We had had advances in things like radar and sonar. And who knows what the next advance is going to be that's going to help us kind of maintain our defense edge?
BERAS: Right, other ars (ph) of all kinds.
BERMAN: Yeah, other ars, yeah.
BERAS: Innovations in national defense and science. This was also about fostering American influence around the world. Funding research at universities would place the U.S. at the center of the intellectual and economic universe. Here he is speaking with Edward R. Murrow.
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VANNEVAR BUSH: New light is being thrown into dark corners everywhere. Knowledge is building up, and in my opinion, the dam will break and there will be many applications and very important ones.
BERAS: This system took off. More Americans went to college. People the world over came to the U.S. to study and work. The grants grew, the science flourished and the universities got bigger. This system helped spawn innovations we all use today, like Google's search code. It grew health care as an industry, and tech. In 2023, the federal government spent $60 billion on research and development at universities.
But now, because of actions the Trump administration has taken, funding for all kinds of science is at its lowest level in decades. That has university leaders making difficult decisions, like Andrew Martin, chancellor of Washington University in St. Louis. His school has already lost funding, and he worries what that will mean for the future, especially when he knows the rest of the world is still clamoring to compete.
ANDREW MARTIN: There are other countries, particularly China, that are investing heavily in research, in technology, in biomedical science because they see an opportunity to very quickly become as competitive as we are in the United States. I would hate for us as a country to lose the battle that we've already won.
BERAS: He's been going to Washington, D.C., to speak with lawmakers, trying to make them understand the value of all that research - how, just like Vannevar Bush argued decades ago, that the money the government spends, it's an investment. It will pay off.
Erika Beras, NPR News.
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