Makenna Arase
Contributing Writer
Following state budget cuts and decreased National Institute of Health (NIH) grant funding to the UC, UC Santa Barbara (UCSB) faces hiring freezes and slashed research funding. This sudden halt has prompted campus student protests and university support of the California Attorney General’s lawsuit against the NIH.
On Jan. 10, Governor Gavin Newsom announced California’s 2025–2026 budget would reduce General Fund support for the UCs by 7.95 percent ($396.6 million). On Feb. 7, the NIH, the largest funder of biomedical research in the world, declared a new 15 percent cap on indirect cost payments, decreasing UC funding by at least $421 million, estimated by compiling an analysis by The New York Times. “Indirect costs,” or “overhead costs,” are expenses for activities essential to doing scientific work but aren’t directly related to the research. They include lab and building maintenance, animal facilities, shared equipment, and administrative salaries. Previously, the average indirect-costs rate was 40 percent, sometimes even 75 percent.
With an estimated combined state and federal budget reduction of $924.6 million, UC President Michael V. Drake says the loss would have a “particularly profound impact” on the UCs. In the same message, he called for a system-wide hiring freeze and halting of non-essential expenditures, such as maintenance and business travel, a sentiment UCSB Chancellor Yang echoed in his own announcement, which called for “alternative funding sources for critical functions” and the streamlining of “duplicative activities.” With a predicted $24 million permanent state fund reduction and $45 million expenditure increase, Yang projects a permanent budget reduction of 10-12.95 percent, calling the situation a “formidable challenge.”
Kiki Reyes, the UCSB Media Relations Manager, specified in an interview with The Bottom Line (TBL) that “each department has been asked to propose plans for meeting the expected reductions, based on their own needs and operations.”
Also in an interview with TBL, Parshan Khosravi, the California Policy Director of nonprofit uAspire, warned of a dark outcome to department cuts, where “institutions are taking advantage of these cuts by going after the departments, staff, or faculty they don’t like first.” Although keeping them undisclosed, Khosravi mentioned instances where universities “use these cuts to basically cut out the entire Gender and Sexuality Studies Department. Another one is trying to cut the Ethnic Studies program…it’s not always equity by design.”
Besides the institution budget and employment, the new state budget also affects state-funded student aid. Under the 2025–2026 plan, Cal Grant, the state’s largest financial aid program for undergraduates, must increase spending by $109 million, leading to a total program spending of $2.6 billion for the year.
The Middle Class Scholarship (MCS), conversely, faces significant funding cuts. Exclusively for UC or CSU students, in 2024–2025, the MCS awards were expected to cover 35 percent of a student’s remaining cost of attendance. In the 2025–2026 plan, they’re expected to cover 18 percent. The budget plan reduces funding by $110 million, while also rescinding a $289 million one-time fund for the program. As a result, student awards will decrease from $924,767 millon in 2024–2025 to $527,200 million in 2025–2026. In the 2022–2023 school year, 99.2 percent of students used their MCS awards — 92,284 at UCs and 205,427 at CSUs. Many of these students likely won’t receive the aid they need, limiting their ability to attend university.
For graduate students, the path forward is clearer. On April 8, hundreds of students and academic workers gathered in front of the UCSB Davidson Library to participate in the national “Kill the Cuts” protest day. Led by the local union of United Auto Workers (UAW Local 4811), who represent 48,000 academic workers in the UC, demonstrators protested the federal and state budget cuts and the already-occurring layoffs on campus. Fourth-year UCSB grad student Madeline Vailhe said in an interview with The Independent, “There have been layoffs of graduate students and researchers on this campus… They’re being told they may have to transfer labs or even drop from PhD programs to master’s.” The official Kill the Cuts website heavily features UC researcher insights on the academic impact, with one UC Merced graduate student arguing it’s “forcing us to limit innovation and question whether we can continue our work on life-saving treatments.”
UAW Local 4811 is not alone in its efforts. Drake claims the UC “leads the nation in NIH funding,” and on Feb. 10, the UC submitted a declaration in support of the California Attorney General’s lawsuit filed against the Trump administration and NIH’s cuts. A coalition of more than 22 state attorney generals sued the NIH for violating the Administrative Procedure Act (“APA”), citing, among other reasons, failure to consider grant recipient reliance and operating outside of its authority. The coalition described the NIH’s actions as an “extraordinary attempt to disrupt all existing and future grants” that posed not only “an immediate threat to the nation’s research infrastructure, but will also have a long-lasting impact on its research capabilities and its ability to provide life-saving breakthroughs in scientific research.”
On April 7, federal judge Angel Kelley permanently barred the NIH from imposing the 15 percent indirect cost cap, although the NIH signaled it would appeal the case in the first U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Until then, institutions enjoy a bit more time, with Drake calling the UC “grateful” for the judge’s move.
As campuses grapple with momentarily-quelled federal cuts and unyielding state cuts, students and faculty alike float in limbo, unsure of what will happen next or what to expect in the coming year.