23 October 2025
Ithaka has released a new resource tracking the costs of the administration’s actions on the people who make the research enterprise possible.
As universities adjust their budgets to reflect these new realities, we are seeing what is likely the first wave of layoffs and program cuts. These cuts have immediate consequences for both university staff, faculty, and students and on local economies. The loss of the human expertise required to conduct and administer research, and reduced opportunities for new researchers to enter their chosen fields, will have downstream effects on scientific discovery and scholarship for years to come.
The goal of the University Research Workforce Tracker is to gather public information about layoffs, hiring freezes, and related personnel actions that affect individuals involved in academic research. The tracker also includes information about the closure or reduction of graduate programs that train future generations of scholars, as well as institutional budget cuts that could impact people involved in research activities. Money is fungible, and university budgets face financial pressures from all sides, but the tracker includes entries only if the institution attributes their actions at least in part to cuts, cancellations, and uncertainty about federal research awards.
Blog post and tracker can be found here: https://sr.ithaka.org/blog/federal-funding-cuts-and-research-universities/