President Donald Trump wants to end funding for TRIO, Federal Work-Study and other grant programs that support students on campus as part of a broader plan to cut $163 billion in nondefense programs.
The funding cuts were outlined in a budget proposal released Friday. The document, considered a “skinny budget,” is essentially a wish list for the fiscal year 2026 budget for Congress to consider. The proposal kicks off what will likely be a yearlong effort to adopt a budget for the next fiscal year, which starts Oct. 1. Trump is unlikely to get all of his plan through Congress, though Republicans have seemed especially willing this year to support his agenda.
If enacted, the plan would codify Trump’s efforts over the last three months to cut spending and reduce the size of the federal government—moves that some have argued were illegal. (Congress technically has final say over the budget, but Trump and his officials have raised questions about the legality of laws that require the president to spend federal funds as directed by the legislative branch.)
The proposed budget plan slashes nearly $18 billion from the National Institutes of Health, $12 billion from the Education Department, and nearly $5 billion from the National Science Foundation. The skinny budget also eliminates funding for the Institute of Museum and Library Sciences, AmeriCorps, National Endowment for the Arts, and National Endowment for the Humanities. Trump has already made deep cuts at those agencies and put most—if not all—of their employees on leave.
A fuller budget with more specifics is expected later this month.
Democrats were quick to blast Trump’s plan, saying it would set the country “back decades by decimating investments to help families afford the basics.” But Republicans countered that the proposal would rein in “Washington’s runaway spending” and right-size “the bloated federal bureaucracy.”
For higher ed groups and advocates, the proposed cuts could further jeopardize the country’s standing as a leader in global innovation and put college out of reach for some students.
“Rather than ushering in a new Golden Age, the administration is proposing cuts to higher education and scientific research of an astonishing magnitude that would decimate U.S. innovation, productivity, and national security,” said Mark Becker, president of the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities, in a statement. “We call on Congress to reject these deeply misguided proposed cuts and instead invest in the nation’s future through education and pathbreaking research.”
Zeroing Out ED Programs
At the Education Department, the Trump administration is proposing to end a number of programs and reduce funding to others.
The president wants to eliminate the department altogether; Education Secretary Linda McMahon said in a statement that the proposal reflects “an agency that is responsibly winding down, shifting some responsibilities to the states, and thoughtfully preparing a plan to delegate other critical functions to more appropriate entities.”
McMahon laid off nearly half of the agency’s staff in March, so the budget also addresses those cuts.
To compensate for the cuts to programs that directly support students or institutions, the administration argued colleges, states and local communities should on take that responsibility. Other justifications for the cuts reflect the administration’s crackdown on diversity, equity and inclusion programs and higher ed.
For instance, officials from the Office of Management and Budget wrote that the SEOG program “contributes to rising college costs that [institutes of higher education] have used to fund radical leftist ideology instead of investing in students and their success.” (The SEOG program provides $100 to $4,000 to students “with exceptional financial need,” according to the department.)
On TRIO and GEAR UP, which help low-income students get to college, the administration said those programs were a “relic of the past when financial incentives were needed to motivate Institutions of Higher Education to engage with low-income students and increase access … Today, the pendulum has swung and access to college is not the obstacle it was for students of limited means.”
Additionally, the administration wants to cut the Office for Civil Rights’ budget by $49 million, or 35 percent. The budget document says this cut will refocus OCR “away from DEI and Title IX transgender cases.” In recent years, the Biden administration pleaded with Congress to boost OCR’s funding in order to address an increasing number of complaints. The office received 22,687 complaints in fiscal year 2024, and the Biden administration projected that number to grow to nearly 24,000 in 2025.
But the OMB document claims that OCR will clear its “massive backlog” this year. “This rightsizing is consistent with the reduction across the Department and an overall smaller Federal role in K-12 and postsecondary education,” officials wrote.
The administration also proposed cutting the Education Department’s overall budget for program administration by 30 percent. The $127 million cut reflects the staffing cuts and other efforts to wind down the department’s operations.
“President Trump’s proposed budget puts students and parents above the bureaucracy,” McMahon said. “The federal government has invested trillions of taxpayer dollars into an education system that is not driving improved student outcomes—we must change course and reorient taxpayer dollars toward proven programs that generate results for American students.”
Science and Research Cuts
Agencies that fund research at colleges and universities are also facing deep cuts. The $4.9 billion proposed cut at the National Science Foundation is about half of what the agency received in fiscal year 2024—the last year Congress adopted a full budget.
The cuts will end NSF programs aimed at broadening participation in the STEM fields, which totaled just over $1 billion, as well as $3.45 billion in general research and education.
“The budget cuts funding for: climate; clean energy; woke social, behavioral, and economic sciences; and programs in low priority areas of science,” the officials wrote in budget documents. “NSF has fueled research with dubious public value, like speculative impacts from extreme climate scenarios and niche social studies.”
As examples of “research with dubious public value,” officials specifically highlighted a $13.8 million NSF grant at Columbia University to “advance livable, safe, and inclusive communities” and a $15.2 million grant to the University of Delaware focused on achieving “sustainable equity, economic prosperity, and coastal resilience in the context of climate change.” The administration is maintaining the funding for research into artificial intelligence and quantum information sciences.
The budget plan also aims to make significant reforms at the National Institutes of Health while slashing the agency’s budget by $17.9 billion. NIH received $47 billion in fiscal 2024.
The plan would consolidate NIH programs into five areas: the National Institute on Body Systems Research; National Institute on Neuroscience and Brain Research; National Institute of General Medical Sciences; National Institute of Disability Related Research; and National Institute on Behavioral Health.
The National Institute on Minority and Health Disparities, the Fogarty International Center, the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health and the National Institute of Nursing Research would all be cut. The administration is planning to maintain $27 billion for NIH research.
“The administration is committed to restoring accountability, public trust, and transparency at the NIH,” officials wrote. “NIH has broken the trust of the American people with wasteful spending, misleading information, risky research, and the promotion of dangerous ideologies that undermine public health.”
