Harvard University has announced it will admit half the usual number of science PhD students in the upcoming academic year - a direct consequence of federal grant freezes that have disrupted $1.4 billion worth of university research projects since January 2025. The cuts are part of a broader brain drain that L. Rafael Reif, president emeritus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, described in a Foreign Affairs essay as an existential threat to American innovation, "Hvylya" reports.
The talent pipeline that sustained American science for decades is reversing direction. At least 85 U.S. researchers have joined Chinese institutions since the beginning of 2024, according to CNN. European universities report unprecedented interest in open positions from American academics. The flow is particularly pronounced in artificial intelligence: an Economist analysis found that in 2019, only a third of top AI conference researchers who completed undergraduate degrees in China remained there. By 2025, more than two-thirds did. Over the same period, the share of Chinese researchers who earned graduate degrees abroad and then returned to China more than doubled.
The stakes are high because international talent has been central to American scientific dominance. Over the past 20 years, 38 percent of science and engineering doctoral degrees at U.S. universities have gone to international students, who earn the majority of doctorates in computer science, engineering, and mathematics. Forty percent of U.S. Nobel Prize winners in chemistry, medicine, and physics over the past 25 years have been immigrants. Immigrants have founded more than half of American startups valued at $1 billion or more.
China has already surpassed the United States in raw output. In 2022, the latest year with available data, China awarded more than 53,000 doctoral degrees in science and engineering, while U.S. institutions awarded fewer than 45,000. With less than a quarter of China's population, the United States cannot compete unless it welcomes international students and makes it easier for them to remain after graduation, Reif argued.
The forces pushing talent away from the United States are reinforcing each other. Grant freezes force universities to support fewer graduate students. Crackdowns on student visas and immigration enforcement dissuade international applicants. Political attacks on universities create uncertainty for established researchers. Reif warned that the current administration is undermining every pillar of the talent system that made American science the world's strongest.
Earlier, "Hvylya" reported on how a finance graduate in the United States turned to tree pruning after white-collar jobs dried up across the country.