Robert A. Brown is a former president of Boston University and former provost at MIT. He is the author of “Fighting Fires and Building Flywheels: How We Sustain America’s Research Universities.”
For nearly two years now, research universities have been under continual assault. The Trump administration is systematically destroying what others have heralded as the best research system in the world. Our institutions will attract less global talent, train fewer researchers, and make fewer discoveries. The result will be the loss of our country’s global leadership in technology and medicine.
How could this happen so quickly? The aggressiveness of the administration’s attacks is only part of the story. What is not described in most of the university rebuttals pushing back against the administration is that most research universities had gotten into a precarious position even before the assault began.
The finances of many institutions were already stretched thin, feeling the pressures of declining student numbers, demands for cost control, calls for increased student access and better educational outcomes, and the first waves of the tsunami driven by AI. But the simmering vulnerability, the unspoken truth, was these institutions’ increasing difficulty raising federal research dollars whose level had not kept pace with our economy, foreign competition, or the aspirations of a growing number of universities.
The number of research institutions with the R1 Carnegie Classification — the designation for “very research intensive” — grew from 108 in 2010 to 187 in 2025. Still more aspire to this designation, declaring big goals for increasing their research funding.
Universities have to spend a great deal of their own funds to advance their research. According to 2022 data, R1 universities were spending 46 cents of their own money for each dollar of federal support, a subsidy that has been rising for decades. This points to the problem with chasing more federal research funding: Most universities simply do not have enough money to support such efforts, much less grow them. They cannot continue to support the 1960s version of a “thousand flowers blooming” university, especially in the face of declining federal support, changing student demand, and the need to transform education to incorporate AI.
By themselves, these pressures are enough to demand systemic change. Add the attacks by the administration and many research universities face existential crises.
There is no doubt that the administration’s onslaught must be addressed. It is slashing federal research funding, driving away international talent, making federal agencies dysfunctional, and politicizing grants by putting political appointees in control. We could be on the verge of an innovation winter at a time when innovation is key to our well-being.
Fighting against the administration’s cuts is critical, but simply hoping for future federal funding increases — or even a return to past levels — will not solve the problems of our research universities. They’ll require much bolder leadership than college presidents have traditionally shown, especially at schools where individual academic units have plotted their own futures and strategic plans have amounted to requests for gifts.
It is time for leaders to galvanize their institutions to rethink the university’s dual mission of education and research. First, instead of measuring their research prowess by the amount of money they spend, they need to figure out where they can be distinctive, either nationally or by supporting their communities and states.
Second, universities have to be preparing undergraduates to be thoughtful citizens and navigate the dramatic shifts in the professional world. Because of AI, almost every aspect of higher education needs to move away from learning facts and methodologies and toward knowledge integration — using human creativity to solve problems. The university research environment should be thought of as an asset that gives students the opportunity to hone these skills.
The new vision of the university also should include redesigning its organization. Are century-old disciplines the best configuration? Do we need departments representing a dozen flavors of engineering and a similar number for biology? Today’s top researchers are working on society’s biggest challenges by interconnecting knowledge across traditional disciplines. The impact on human health of fusing medicine, engineering, and computation is a successful example. Such convergences should be mirrored in the university’s structure. However, change is often inhibited by ossified academic departments. If they continue to exist, the intellectual and administrative barriers between them need to come down. Only then can universities successfully embed AI in essentially every field.
By pushing for academic integration, I am not arguing for either a structureless university or one where every faculty member contributes to collective efforts. This is not how many advances happen. Breakthroughs are built on foundations of contributions from researchers, many following their passions. That will still happen; however, the new university’s research reputation will be built as much on its impact in areas of emphasis as on the individual excellence of the faculty.
Ultimately, the challenge for research universities is about money. The late Sister Irene Krauss, the chief executive of the Daughters of Charity National Health System, coined the aphorism “no margin, no mission” to emphasize that nonprofits, including research universities, must have sustainable models.
These challenges and the administration’s attacks place university presidents in a tough position. They must generate consensus for change and own the decisions that drive it — roles that cannot be delegated to faculty committees, deans, or boards. They must create the vision for a unique institution, emphasizing its research strengths, its place in society, and its commitment to delivering a 21st-century education. It will take all the diplomacy and will they can muster.