Ph.D.s in STEM, Health Roles Fled Federal Agencies

The number of Ph.D. holders in STEM and health roles leaving 14 federal research agencies outnumbered hires 11 to 1 last year, according to a Science analysis of White House Office of Personnel Management (OPM) data. That has resulted in a net 4,224 fewer such Ph.D.s in those agencies, the journal reported this week.

Science also noted that reductions in force “accounted for relatively few departures.”

“At most agencies, the most common reasons for departures were retirements and quitting,” Science reported. “Although OPM classifies many of these as voluntary, outside forces including the fear of being fired, the lure of buyout offers, or a profound disagreement with Trump policies, likely influenced many decisions to leave.”

The National Institutes of Health saw the greatest increase in departures of STEM and health-related Ph.D.s from 2024 to 2025, when President Trump retook the White House. In 2024, 421 left the NIH; in 2025, more than 1,100 left. The agency also hired far fewer of those Ph.D.s last year than the year before. (Trump proposed cutting the NIH’s budget by roughly 40 percent this fiscal year, alongside massive cuts to other federal research agencies.)

The National Science Foundation lost a net 205 STEM and health-related Ph.D.s, equaling “40% of its total pre-Trump Ph.D. workforce of 517, by far the largest percentage at any agency,” Science reported. Nearly half of those who left the NSF last year were “rotators,” scholars on temporary leave from their universities, Science reported, noting that the agency erased 75 percent of those rotator positions last year.

Across all 14 agencies, the number of such Ph.D.s employed shrank 17 percent on average from 2024 to last year.

In an email to Inside Higher Ed, Emily G. Hilliard, a spokesperson for the Health and Human Services Department, which includes the NIH, wrote that “under the Biden administration and throughout the pandemic, HHS ballooned into a bloated bureaucracy” that produced “no measurable improvements in public health.”

“The status quo was not working, and a major reset was overdue,” the spokesperson said. “HHS did just that, to streamline operations, reduce redundancies, and go back to pre-pandemic employment levels. It’s important to note many of these changes reflect voluntary departures through generous ‘Fork in the Road’ and early retirement offers, not a retreat from science.”