OPINION:
For decades, the National Institutes of Health and America’s university system operated behind a shroud of academic prestige, bureaucratic opacity and budgetary excess. While billions of taxpayer dollars flowed freely to elite institutions, little scrutiny was applied to how funds were allocated, how research priorities were set or how far some campuses drifted from their original missions. That era is over.
The storm shaking the NIH and higher education wasn’t accidental or incidental. It was intentional and long overdue. The driving force? President Trump, including his appointment of Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, who was just confirmed as NIH director.
Despite the pearl-clutching headlines and frantic faculty memos, what’s happening is not a crisis; it’s a course correction. For the first time in years, powerful institutions are being asked to justify themselves, explain their budgets, focus their missions and return to transparency and accountability. Mr. Trump had the political courage to pull back the curtain.
One of the clearest examples is the new 15% cap on indirect cost reimbursements in NIH grants. Previously, universities could receive 27% to 28% or more in “indirect” costs, a bureaucratic code for overhead.
That meant millions of dollars going not to lab research or groundbreaking science but to administrative bloat, cushy office renovations and ever-expanding diversity, equity and inclusion departments. Yes, this was happening. Indirect costs were not going to “electricity” alone, as many academic researchers claimed. Under the Trump administration’s reforms, that money must be used more efficiently and transparently. The change has sent shock waves through Columbia, Harvard, Yale, UConn, Duke and other schools, which now must tighten belts and cut back on years of excess.
Naturally, the establishment is panicking. Duke University expects to lose hundreds of millions of dollars. Baylor College of Medicine is reducing the size of its incoming graduate class. Harvard, Stanford and other elite schools are convening emergency meetings on navigating the new funding landscape. The question every taxpayer should ask is simple: If a 15% cap on overhead is enough to upend these institutions, what were they doing with our money?
The push for oversight isn’t limited to dollars; it’s about values, too. NIH grant terminations have sparked fresh debate about the research the government should fund. Studies promoting overt ideological agendas under the banner of “diversity,” “climate justice” or “queer mental health equity” have come under review. In some cases, grants were suspended or terminated outright.
Critics cry foul, yet these aren’t attacks on science but on politicized science. The Trump administration is asking questions that should have been asked long ago: Are we funding real medical innovation or ideological activism? Are our research priorities aligned with national needs or elite academic trends? For too long, NIH leaders operated as if peer review panels were the only standard. Now, they are being held accountable to the American public.
The same is true for higher education as a whole. Universities are being pressed to rethink their bloated administrative structures, their fixation on race and gender politics, and their growing hostility to intellectual diversity. Some institutions rush to hire lobbyists in Washington, desperate to maintain the status quo. Sensing the cultural shift, others belatedly embrace neutrality and refocus on merit. That shift wouldn’t have happened without the political pressure of Trump-era policies and personnel.
Recent legislative moves reflect this momentum. A surge of higher education bills in Congress to increase transparency, limit taxpayer exposure and scrutinize campus operations has emerged in parallel with the administration’s push. The closure of the Department of Education, while still under legal and legislative review, signals a radical rethinking of the federal role in academia. Critics say it’s chaos. Supporters say it’s a long-overdue reckoning.
Let’s be clear: None of this would happen under a Jeb Bush administration or a President Biden. The Washington consensus — left, right and center — has long been deferential to the academic class. Prestige shielded universities from scrutiny. Bureaucracy protected NIH from reform. Mr. Trump, however, isn’t interested in appeasing elite institutions. He is interested in results, efficiency and accountability. He doesn’t care about honorary degrees or Ivy League panels. He cares about delivering for the American people.
There’s a reason the legacy media is panicking. There’s a reason The Chronicle of Higher Education, Science magazine, The New York Times and The Harvard Crimson are screaming “crisis.” For the first time, the American public is looking inside the black box of federal research funding and university spending, and they don’t like what they see.
Of course, real reform won’t happen overnight. The swamp runs deep, even in academia. But make no mistake: A new era is dawning. Institutions that once saw themselves as untouchable are learning that transparency is not optional, that public funding comes with public accountability, and that politics can and should challenge the unchecked power of unelected academic bureaucrats.
Mr. Trump didn’t just shake the system; he exposed it. He forced the NIH and our universities to answer tough questions about how virtue signaling has replaced logic and infected every corner of academic research. In doing so, he gives us something the academy hasn’t had in years: sunlight.
Sunlight, as they say, is the best disinfectant.
• Isaiah Hankel is the CEO of Overqualified.com and a three-time bestselling author.
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