NSF Over Billion Behind on Grants; IES Says Will Give Funds

The slower pace of federal research funding awards since President Trump returned to the White House, coupled with his administration’s mass cancellations of existing grants, have repeatedly alarmed researchers, universities and their supporters.

As another fiscal year under Trump comes to a close Sept. 30, advocates are watching federal spending data to see if the outlook for research funding improves. Grant Witness, a group tracking federal agency grant funding, is reporting that the National Science Foundation, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality are far behind where they were this time last fiscal year—which itself was a tumultuous one for research funding.

“NOAA, AHRQ, NSF: They’re all different flavors of the same story,” said Scott Delaney, co-founder of Grant Witness. “Horrible, bitter, sour flavors that nobody bought. Bipartisan—Congress doesn’t want this. And yet, that’s where we’re at.”

The Education Department’s Institute of Education Sciences has said it will spend all its funds, but groups questioning whether that’s true filed a lawsuit, and a judge is watching.

The figures underline that Trump’s disruption of research—and the funding it provides to graduate students, faculty and universities—continues as the halfway point of his administration nears. Other than NSF and ED, these agencies didn’t respond to Inside Higher Ed’s Friday requests for information on why they’re behind in issuing grants. An NSF spokesperson responded but provided no information.

Grant Witness’s website shows that, as of Sept. 12, the National Institutes of Health, at 57,607 grants totaling $32.8 billion in obligations, is on track to reach last year’s output of $35.3 billion. But the graphs look much different for NSF, another top funder of university research.

As of Thursday, NSF has only awarded 6,200 grants, compared to 8,600 this time last fiscal year and more than 10,000 in each of the four years before that. Total obligations are at $6.3 billion, compared to $8.1 billion last fiscal year.

Unlike some other agencies, NSF wouldn’t have to return any unspent money to the Treasury Department this fiscal year because of how the agency’s funding is allocated. But Delaney said the funding shortfall still means that NSF and other agencies “just aren’t getting the grants out the door, and functionally that means fewer scientists doing less science and ultimately fewer benefits flowing to the American public.”

“There are probably more science agencies that are struggling than are succeeding in hitting their targets,” he added.

Citing contacts within NSF, Delaney said the agency is effectively already done making grants this year. He said his current understanding is it will “not come close” to previous years. The number of NSF grants awarded has essentially flatlined since around Aug. 20.

Nature, which previously reported on NSF’s grants shortfall, said it can “be attributed mainly” to the agency keeping more than $1 billion in an account, much of which is for the White House’s Grand Research Challenges project, which is meant to support specific fields, including artificial intelligence. The project was mentioned in one line in a Sept. 10 NSF memo: “In the coming weeks and months, NSF will announce a series of Grand Research Challenges to take thesis-driven bets that stand to unlock new frontiers of S&T [science and technology].”

Keivan Stassun, a member of the board that oversaw NSF before Trump ousted all its members in April, told Inside Higher Ed that “fundamentally, what’s going on is the agency has been decapitated.” Trump hasn’t named new board members, and the Senate hasn’t confirmed the NSF director he proposed back in February. Stassun said NSF “has no proper leadership—it doesn’t have anyone with any kind of director title, not even deputy director or acting director.”

“It’s [the White House Office of Management and Budget] that’s effectively running the agency,” Stassun said. “And OMB is directing the agency to direct its grant-making dollars in ways that are very different from federal law as passed by Congress in its budget.”

OMB didn’t return requests for comment Friday.

AHRQ and NOAA

AHRQ traditionally funds efforts to improve the country’s health-care system through research and training for new scientists and clinicians. That funding has collapsed. This fiscal year, AHRQ awarded 61 grants and $27 million total as of Sept. 13. This time last year, the agency sent out $181 million across more than 500 projects, per Grant Witness.

AcademyHealth, which represents health-services and health-policy researchers, told Inside Higher Ed that the Trump administration has functionally—and illegally—shut down AHRQ. It estimates 80 percent of AHRQ staff was cut via mass layoffs and subsequent departures, including everyone who worked on the extramural grant program.

AHRQ is on track to leave $160 million unspent, according to Aaron Carroll, AcademyHealth’s president and chief executive officer. That money will likely return to Treasury.

“AHRQ has been stripped of the staff it needs to do its most basic job: fund and oversee research that improves the quality of health care and access to it for all Americans,” Carroll said, adding that “researchers aren’t getting funded, studies aren’t moving forward and money Congress meant for health-services research is going to waste.”

In a letter Wednesday to Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Sens. Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin and Patty Murray of Washington, top Democrats on the Senate Appropriations Committee, said that AHRQ leadership informed the committee earlier this month “of its ‘plans’ to spend $100 million on inter-agency agreements (IAAs), which would enable the Department to siphon dollars away from AHRQ to support other initiatives, instead of funding the health care quality and delivery research that Congress specifically set aside resources for.”

“AHRQ has provided very limited information on how this funding would actually be spent—let alone how it could be spent effectively between now and Sept. 30,” the senators wrote. “AHRQ supposedly plans to spend $30 million to support the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and help schools develop strategies for improving school meals. We have received no further information.”

Delaney said Grant Witness plans to launch a NOAA tracker next week. It will show that as of Sept. 2, NOAA has made 229 grants totaling $679 million in obligations, far below the average of 891 grants and $1.75 billion in obligations for 2021–24. Delaney said NOAA doesn’t have to return its unspent money to Treasury.

IES

The Institute of Education Sciences awards grants to study how to improve K–12 and higher ed. The Trump administration gutted IES’s staffing last year, though officials have said they plan to reimagine the research agency.

Advocacy groups have warned since April that hundreds of millions could expire by Sept. 30. In June, the Knowledge Alliance, the National Center for Learning Disabilities and other groups sued ED, OMB and related individuals and entities over fears that IES wouldn’t spend money allocated back in 2024 by the deadline at the end of this fiscal year, meaning those dollars would go back to Treasury. Cerin Lindgrensavage, counsel for Protect Democracy and one of the attorneys on the case, told Inside Higher Ed that $180 million in IES funding remains unobligated, according to the latest info plaintiffs have received.

On Thursday, a judge told the government to update the court by Sept. 28 on whether the spending is on track.

“The current posture of the case presents an ongoing factual dispute concerning whether Defendants will actually obligate the funds by Sept. 30,” U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts Judge Allison D. Burroughs wrote. “Despite defense counsel’s guarantees, Plaintiffs continue to worry that Defendants will not ultimately allocate the funds.”

“If it appears, as Sept. 30 approaches, that Defendants have misled the Court and the funds will not be obligated by the deadline, the Court may reconsider whether there has been undue delay warranting injunctive relief,” Burroughs wrote.

Lindgrensavage said, “We’re pleased that the court has put together a path to assure that the defendants make good on their promises to obligate all the funds.” In an email, an ED spokesperson wrote that “IES intends to use its remaining FY25 funds to fully fund existing research grants, as well as to support other high-quality statistical and evaluation activities in service of its statutory obligations.”