The past two years have been challenging for academic research; scientists are grappling with grant terminations, funding cuts, stalled awards and ongoing policy changes, all sowing a sense of deep uncertainty. Neuroscience graduate programs have felt the squeeze, scrambling to adjust their admissions and other practices in the face of falling funding.
To better understand how these programs are faring, The Transmitter surveyed 50 neuroscience program directors in the United States, asking about changes to admissions processes, training grants and other funding. According to the results, major concerns include finding labs for incoming students and career prospects post-degree. Faculty are also worried about the impact these cuts will have on the next generation of neuroscientists—and the field more broadly.
“My biggest concern is that we’ll break the training pipeline,” says Richard Mooney, former director of graduate studies in neurobiology at Duke University.
T
o sample the field, we compiled a list of 100 neuroscience graduate programs in the U.S., using a combination of the Society for Neuroscience’s institutional affiliates, neuroscience programs with T32 grants and U.S. News & World Report rankings. We sent out the survey in May 2026, asking respondents to compare their 2025 and 2026 admissions cycles with the 2023 and 2024 cycles. Directors or administrators from 50 programs responded. Following the survey, The Transmitter spoke with several directors to get more insight into the challenges they face and the changes they are making in response.For most programs, the number of applicants has remained stable over the past four years, with roughly a third reporting more applicants than in the past. But the number of students who were accepted has dropped; 70 percent of respondents said they decreased the number of students they have admitted in the past two years compared with the previous two. And more than half have enrolled fewer students. “We are experiencing higher acceptance rates, but we’re making far fewer offers,” one respondent reported. “Our cohort size is down 40 percent.”
Declining admissions: For most programs, the number of applicants has remained the same in the past two application cycles compared with the previous two. But nearly three quarters of programs have admitted fewer students. And more than half have enrolled fewer students.
Money troubles: Funding uncertainty is driving admissions changes, with concerns about tuition support, lab placements and shrinking training grants topping the list.
Funding concerns were the top reason for smaller class sizes. As more labs grapple with a lack of stable funding, many can no longer commit to supporting a graduate student for the duration of their Ph.D. That makes it more difficult to secure spots for incoming students. “As [principal investigators] become less confident in their ability to achieve funding, it makes them more reluctant to take on the quarter-of-a-million-dollar commitment that a graduate student represents at our institution,” says David Weaver, director of the neuroscience graduate program at UMass Chan Medical School.
In response, many programs have shifted their approach to admissions. In the past, programs typically extended offers to more students than they could enroll, expecting only a portion to accept. But with smaller class sizes, that expectation has changed. Some programs have moved toward a progressive acceptance process, putting students on a waitlist and admitting them only if a spot opens up. “We now make offers to match the number of slots; applicants are moved from the waitlist when others decline their offer,” one respondent said. “This process is nerve-racking for all parties, but it ensures we don’t exceed our number of available slots.”
With fewer principal investigators able to commit to supporting a graduate student, programs are also thinking more explicitly about where new students will go. “Now every few months we’re taking a survey: How many of you are actually able to commit to a graduate student for funding for five years?” says Shelly Flagel, director of the neuroscience graduate program at the University of Michigan. “That confidence has completely gone away.” Junior faculty with startup packages are often the most confident about funding, she says.
Weaver estimates that in the past, about three faculty members wanted each student. “But this year, the number of opportunities was lower relative to the number of students, even with a small cohort.” He guesses opportunities have dropped from about 200 to 50. Faculty surveys now drive recruitment targets, and offers go out in smaller batches, he says.
Changing recruitment: About half of programs have modified their recruitment patterns in the past two years. Programs reported interviewing fewer applicants, conducting fewer in-person interviews, shifting to Zoom interviews, and adding practices to avoid overrecruitment, such as creating waitlists to avoid exceeding the number of available slots.
Larger umbrella programs may be more protected, because they have many more faculty. At the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, for example, students can join any lab in the graduate school as long as the project is neuroscience related, so they aren’t stranded if many faculty in one program lose funding. Maria Chahrour, director of the neuroscience program at the University of Texas Southwestern, says she has heard that some programs have shut down, but her program is somewhat “shielded” by this structure.
Program directors are also concerned about interest from international students, with more than half of programs reporting fewer international applications. Yongsoo Kim, director of the neuroscience graduate program at Pennsylvania State University, reports a decline of more than 50 percent among international applicants, compared with 10 to 20 percent among domestic ones. Visa changes are likely to amplify this decline: New U.S. regulations now limit student visas to four years, which is significantly less time than it takes to complete a typical Ph.D.
International interest: More than half of programs reported a decrease in the number of international applicants. The vast majority have not changed how they handle international applicants.
I
Rotate or stay: The majority of programs use a rotation model. Twenty percent of programs have changed their approach.
Rather than eliminating rotations, some programs have shortened them, moving from a year-long model with 10-to-15-week rotations to shorter month-long or two-month versions. That reduces the financial burden on the program, which supports students during this period, and helps students settle in a lab and begin their thesis research more quickly, ultimately shortening time to degree.
At the University of California, San Diego, graduate program director Brenda Bloodgood and her team have implemented three one-month rotations over the summer without any coursework, modeled after M.D./Ph.D. programs, so that students can start in their thesis labs in the fall of their first year. In doing so, they aim to shrink the duration of a typical Ph.D. by about nine months. They also adjusted coursework to the beginning or end of the day so that students have long, uninterrupted stretches of time to be in the lab. Early feedback from faculty and students is positive, though Bloodgood says to “ask me again in a year or two.”
Lost funds: More than half of programs reported losing federal training grants in the past two years.
Diversity decline: Among 25 respondents who mentioned T32 grants, about a third reported losses, and close to a third reported no changes. Among 21 respondents who noted changes to diversity-related grants, 20 reported lost or decreased grants. Only one program reported a new grant aimed at underrepresented groups.
Respondents reported a roller-coaster ride with respect to training grants; some have been canceled, some canceled and reinstated, and some are stuck in review. Sixty-two percent of programs reported losing training grants in the past two years; only 12 percent had won or expanded these grants. Among the 25 respondents who mentioned T32 grants in follow-up comments, 32 percent reported that grants had been lost or reduced, 28 percent reported grants had remained stable, 20 percent reported that grants had been frozen or delayed, and 20 percent reported gaining funding. “We lost diversity grants and supplements, funding for other grants, new grants that have not been funded, and delays and lack of decisions in funding,” one respondent reported.
Diversity-related grants were most affected. Among 21 respondents specifically mentioning diversity-related grants, 20 of them reported that those grants had been canceled or reduced. “All diversity supplements—as far as I know—have been canceled,” noted one respondent. Chahrour and others say diversity-related training grants have been cut off mid-training. “It’s going to result in a less diverse pool of scientists,” she says.
At the University of Michigan, Flagel’s lab lost two diversity-related grants: an F31-diversity grant, which is a program aimed at underrepresented groups, and an R01 supplement, which sent her lab on a six-month scramble to find funding. “Their graduate training support was completely pulled from them,” Flagel says. “The scientific merit of their work was not lost; the project didn’t suddenly become less rigorous or less valuable. What changed was the government’s willingness to support the people carrying them out.”
Princess Felix, a graduate student in Flagel’s lab, was awarded the F31 in 2025. The award was supposed to last for three years, but in mid-2025, Felix received a notice saying it would be cut off after one year. (The program is now listed as “expired” on the National Institutes of Health page.) “That made me start scrambling; it changed my timeline,” Felix says. “I felt like I was being punished by applying to this mechanism.”
Though Flagel ultimately found alternative funding for both trainees, the terminations still had consequences; one student left for an external internship earlier than planned, and another finished her Ph.D. earlier than planned. “We’ve been working so hard to try to make this a more supportive environment for people from underrepresented groups, and now this is being pulled from them; it’s really changed what their graduate school experience is going to look like,” Flagel says. “This is going to have long-term effects on the scientific workforce.” Flagel adds that she is shrinking the size of her lab, in part because of challenges in finding graduate student funding.
Tuition costs: Most programs continue to waive tuition for Ph.D. students.
Steady stipends: The duration of stipend support offered to Ph.D. students remains stable in three quarters of programs. However, nearly 20 percent of programs have decreased the number of years of guaranteed support.
Fortunately, most programs that waived tuition for doctoral students continue to do so. And most have not changed the duration of stipend support.
F
In response, many programs are adding more programming around alternative careers and internships. Chahrour reports that interest in external internships is higher than she has ever seen, including with advocacy groups, family support foundations, startups and in science writing.
Bloodgood estimates that more than three quarters of graduate students used to be bound for postdoctoral work. Now about half are going into industry, she says, though job openings there are shrinking as well. Even industries once seen as a stable alternative, such as biotech, are contracting, she says. “They’re also increasingly uncertain about whether or not research in the United States, be it academic or in the biotech space, is a viable path,” she says. “This is very hard to advise students through, because they’re not hallucinating this.”
Bloodgood and others are concerned about the long-term effects on the scientific pipeline. “We’re going to see the effects in about 10 years or so,” Chahrour says. “It’s just slowing science in general.” Others are more optimistic. Kim, for example, who has trained in South Korea, England and the U.S., still considers the U.S. system to be one of the most robust.
The irony is that these training challenges are coming at a time when researchers say the science itself is most exciting. “Paradoxically, as turbulent as things are in some ways, the power of the techniques and understanding we have gained is accelerating our understanding of complex systems like the nervous system,” Mooney says. “There is tremendous opportunity right now.”
