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Some Harvard students are delaying their applications to graduate school or planning to switch away from academia entirely as budget pressures push universities to offer fewer seats in graduate programs.

Since President Donald Trump took office in January, his administration has chipped away at universities’ federal funding streams and signed an endowment tax increase into law. Many universities have cut back seats in Ph.D. programs, where tuition is generally subsidized by the school, with some schools and departments pausing admissions entirely.

At Harvard, the cuts included a 75 percent reduction in Ph.D. seats in the Science division and a 60 percent reduction in the Arts & Humanities division over the next two years.

Trepidation over fierce competition and uncertain federal funding has become a consideration for students and alumni planning their next steps. For Peter E. Chon ’26, a Mathematics concentrator, federal research funding cuts may have marked a tipping point.

Chon said he started college hoping to go into academia and planning to do research at a university each summer. He began considering searching for a summer internship halfway through college so he could dip his toes into industry first.

When he learned that a prestigious summer research program at the University of Chicago had lost its National Science Foundation funding, he said he realized funding cuts had made similar programs too unstable — and “started recruiting very last minute.”

“At the very least, I can follow where the money is going in industry, and it’s not dependent on — you know, yeah, it’s just a lot more stable,” he added. After completing his internship, Chon threw out his immediate grad school plans.

Anthropology and Neuroscience double concentrator Eli M. Johnson-Visio ’26 said he entered college planning to work in investment banking but began to consider going into academia around his junior year. For now, those plans are on hold.

“I will go to grad school sometime within the next two to three years, probably, but I figured now was probably a good time to take a break from school,” he said, “both because funding for Ph.D. programs has decreased across the country, which means that spots in these programs have decreased. And also, I personally just want a break from school.”

In the meantime, Johnson-Visio hopes to work in regulatory affairs at a pharmaceutical company or else engineer proteins for drug discovery and design.

“With all of the things happening in academia right now, it would be best to just go into private industry,” he said.

When Lydia H. Fraser ’25 — who graduated from Harvard in May with degrees in Art, Film, and Visual Studies and Government — began applying to graduate programs, she focused on schools across the pond.

“I didn’t apply to schools in the U.S.,” Fraser said. “I opted to apply to schools in the U.K. partially because of the funding cuts, and a lot of departments were not recruiting or accepting as many post-grad students.” She is currently completing a nine-month fellowship at the Alaska Native Arts Foundation in Anchorage.

English concentrator Maria F. Cifuentes ’26 said she is planning to take time off before law school but had been advised to push up her timeline in order to finish her studies before the financial pressures on universities get worse.

“I’ve gotten the advice to apply now as opposed to pushing it off because, given the cuts that are coming in, the instability of the current government funding that we have, if it gets worse, better put your foot in now through the door as opposed to waiting for it to get better,” said Cifuentes, a former Crimson Arts editor.

Xinran “Olivia” Ma ’26, who studies Classics, said she hasn’t changed her mind about applying for graduate programs, but she’s approaching her applications differently.

“It just made me reconsider what programs I am going to apply to, and how many,” said Ma, who is a Crimson Arts editor. “Funding cuts is felt pretty deeply across different fields. Humanities — some departments just fully paused admission.”

Now, she said, she’s asking herself, “‘How am I gonna craft my application to be as competitive as I can?”

—Staff writer Ravelska Lafalaise can be reached at ravelska.lafalaise@thecrimson.com.

—Staff writer Tammy S. Lee can be reached at tammy.lee@thecrimson.com.