tbh I’ve never really understood why universities don’t separate their grant-funded research institutions from their academic pursuits. Why keep it all under the same entity?
As to the separation of research and education, where we have achieved the noble goal is a worthwhile discussion but the intent was that the creation of knowledge through research and the transference of knowledge through education have such significant parallels that the should co occur.
And since you mentioned libraries, IMLS recently was DOGE'd which used to provide funds to a lot of libraries.
[1] https://fortune.com/2025/04/07/trump-birthday-military-parad...
The government could spend the equivalent of a university’s endowment many times over and nobody would notice. If it wants to spend more money on scientific research, great - but I’m questioning how effectively that can be used as leverage if the universities don’t really “need” it.
They have an endowment but even columbia can not afford to finance half a billion dollars worth of research off the residuals from their investments.
Need is also an interesting question. A lot of the money that has been cut off across the federal government was already allocated, but just not paid out yet. So people won a grant, built out a service around the grant, and then they are getting stiffed by the government. Suddenly having to find another source for those funds is not tenable even if the school has an endowment, and thus you see everything shutting down. The worst part of the whole thing is this will eventually cost the US more money because the government will likely lose most of these lawsuits but then it costs more to stand the machinery back up once the grants are paid.