I’m giving a talk in a few weeks at a conference and was gonna say something about all the translational skills students are now getting from grad education, but I think I need to substitute something else in talking about this collapse.
Not to worry. Elon will make sure there will be plenty of H1B biologists/chemists from India to do any biology/chemistry work in the US in the future, because, like Vivek says, there are not enough American science grads!
I hate to break it to you, but US science is great BECAUSE students from all over the world come here to study and work along with US-born students.
This happens at all levels, undergrad, grad, and postdoc and this community is the bedrock of american science
or is your nativistic argument that fraud is committed more by immigrant scientists?
Do you realize you are on the same slope as blaming immigrants for crime?
Super shitty, but clarify, they rescinded Ph.D. admissions to one program in the med school (biomedical science doctorate). Not saying we won't get to where they're rescinding all, but we are not there yet.
Gotcha. Sorry, I was actually responding to someone who tagged me to flag your post, not you directly. I think she misunderstood and wanted me to know because I have an MA from one of the UMass schools, and my brother is a UMass Medical grad.
The harm being done to future generations of students and researchers is incalculable. Can it be that a majority of people out there can't see what's happening?
They know; I hear rumblings in this rural community. Their justifications are believing Trump and Musk are "doing what is right for America". It's like a cultish blind belief in what their leaders say. (I wish we had a vaccine for that.)
Just to add, many of these people are not stupid. Unfortunately, I have two family members, one a lifelong Repub & vet. The other an educated accountant who only thinks in terms of finances. She believes in the "tear it all down, bring in marital law, and rebuild smarter".
Every state needs to withhold paying federal taxes until every piece of canceled federal funding is reinstated. Let Trump and his cronies dare to challenge it.
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It doesn't matter. Chan Zuckerberg foundation spent millions upgrading a NOAA facility a few years ago that Trump/Musk shut down, not one peep. They just totally let that money burn.
They're a bit tied up drafting some more posts about pizza and chips and talking about how they have their hands tied and can't do anything while also asking for donations for 2026.
We're gonna have to fight for them since they don't seem interested in actually expending effort properly.
Which "genius" in the Trump-Musk cadre thought, "You know, if we just fire or kill grad school funding for the best & the brightest, most driven young people in America, they'll go away quietly and not join any kind of resistance now that they've got time on their hands & reasons to hate us."
UMass Medical school biomedical science program is where RNA interference was discovered by Andy Fire and Craig Mello, published in Nature in 1998. They received the Nobel Prize for this work in 2006.
What future Nobel Prize work is being delayed by these cuts?
Sincere question, bc i want to get it right. In an image like this that is just text to begin with, what is the difference between the text in the image and the alt text? Maybe since this one is white on black background the alt text would be easier to read?
Even aside from the point that several people have made about a screen reader being able to read the alt text to the user, for a sighted person using a small phone screen the alt text will often be in a more legible font and with better contrast than the screencapped text is.
Text in a picture typically can’t be read by an accessible browser. By eg ocring the picture and then pasting as much of the text as possible into the alt text, you increase its accessibility. A jpeg of text isn’t “text”. This isn’t my best explanation ever but I’m tired! Hopefully it helps.
Besides screen readers, blue sky's search engine, moderation filters, and the programs that generate feeds like "trending" can't read photos of text. It adds to both accessibility _and_ information discovery (and allows people to hide posts with trauma words).
Absolutely!! Thank you for adding this. I’m loving this thread and how many reasons folks are bringing to the conversation! Accessibility helps everyone ☺️💙
I think you might’ve missed my dig at the universities thought process. Endowments are not rainy day funds. This is the rainy day, therefore we cannot use the fund.
I would however question why a university needs a billion dollar endowment if it isn’t for the benefit of students or research
The school isn't being selfish here. Giving up an entire incoming class because they can't guarantee they won't be stranded, or worse, deported is a huge blow to their institution, as well.
Exactly. I don't get the people shitting on the school for this. This is a great big alarm bell that the school is about to go under and might not recover.
If anything, it is a selfless act to make sure they don't bring students into a school that won't be around to graduate them.
This is only the biomedical research department that is rescinding offers of admission not all UMass graduate programs. That said, many of the others, such as science and engineering, will be impacted by federal funding reductions.
At least they are being straight up with people. Some unis would not bother, and continue to take admission applications, stringing hopeful young people along.
It is the wanton destruction of the American university system, the best in the world.
The MAGA Nazi regime is setting back scientific and medical research years, possibly decades. How many people will die as a result of these genocidal policies?
Thus far UNC has not made a similar decision, and I am glad. We have sent our letters that honestly state that future support will hinge on state and federal funding (I just saw a letter sent to student) and I also think that is the right rod forward.
I don't think anyone can predict anything related to the federal government at the moment. I'm sad, too.
They are creating a problem which will become larger than COVID, for no reason and no gain. And yes, we are devastating our economy for generations. Opportunity costs will be staggering.
There should be no "reapply" but automatic next position.
Anything else brands UMass as an untrustworthy institution worth not a nickel of your debt because they will stab your fucken ass at first convenience.
"In a statement to NBC10 Boston, a spokesperson confirmed that several dozen applicants who have received provisional offers for the Morningside Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences program had the offers rescinded."
I really don’t want to live in a society that has a massive shortage of scientists. That’s not just a hellscape world politically speaking, it’s a “does anyone know how to make penicillin?” dystopia.
I know this isn't the most important point, but who the hell starts an email that is about to contain "[Yeah, fuck our commitments. You're fucked]," with "I hope you are doing well" when she knows damn well that in less than a minute they're going to be doing really shitty?
Maybe this is the right decision, maybe not. I do know several students who have been well served by this program. Anything that diminishes opportunities in biomedical research has both short term and long term negative consequences
We are witnessing a disaster.
I’m a credentialed actuary with a masters degree in math and 10 years of personal lines pricing experience, Munich Re has several jobs on their website I could do, and that’s just one company 🤔
This is horrible. It is also telling that universities are not willing to fight for the money that was illegally removed from them. They go for the easiest path, rescind the offers to the future of medical research.
Universities will flight for they money. But even if they win (and one can't assume courts were not corrupted) the fight will take a long time and while it's ongoing the universities have no money and they are trying to protect grass students and postdocs already there
Between the outright cancellation of existing awards and the Trump admin wanting to change allowed overhead rates from 50% to 15% if awarded amount. They are looking at shortfalls in the hundreds of millions. I would not be surprised if existing grad students lose funding.
😡😡😡. I do not think the people making these decisions have a clue what the ramifications of these actions will have. Constant state of ANGRY going here…
I have known many U Mass grads. If you want unsafe drinking water for millions of people and exploding space vehicles then damaging doctoral programs there is a good first step to making our "experts" and professionals less competent and less innovative
Thanks. All the more reason students should be getting expert advice! They don't all read that way, and it sounds like those distictions are becoming important.
Respectfully, I disagree. It is a formal offer, with a salary. And it's actually not early in the process (for us, about 50% of applicants have already made their decisions; the deadline is 4/15).
A PhD takes ~ 5 years; that's a big commitment and it usually requires an applicant to move. /1
Unlike other jobs, if you lose your funding at uni X, it's not like you can just get another PhD position in the same city at a different uni (that's unusual).
We need to do everything we can to be honest with these applicants (and, I believe, provide them job security).
That is so messed up and backwards for us. These talented people will probably go to Canada or Europe for the rest of their training. How does that help us?
Unfortunately, funding at Canadian universities has been getting cut over the past few years as well so we might lose these great minds to another continent!
I live in Worcester. UMass Chan *is* UMass where I live. I'm not blaming the school. I am noting that if this is any indicator of their stability going forward, there will be a big impact on my community.
Intriguing I've never heard it called Worcester University. My friends and I all call it Worcester State as its name. If someone especially on Bluesky mentioned Worcester University I'd immediately think of the school in the UK. Images of pubs come to mind :)
A graduate school program of 50 students is an incredibly large program, A. B,. Most people where don't realize we have a medical school? UMass is one of the largest employers in the city. C, I'm sorry that you don't infer from a med school account posting about UMass that they're posting about Chan
Also, the slash and burn faction will dismiss the weather as lies. There's nothing you can say to appease them. It is foolish to even consider what some DOGE pilled rando thinks about my bsky posts. Losing game from jump.
I feel like this is so foolish to not SAY WHY. Speak clearly about the federal government funding cuts being the issue. Imagine trying to "keep politics out" of a message like this! So cowardly.
That's as vague as you could possibly be imo. It should say "the Trump administration's decisions to defund biomedical research" this stuff is pretty existential for universities and I feel like cowering is not going to save any of them.
Fair point. The way I took it was the vagueness was because they don’t know the extent at this time of what will be cut over the coming months, possibly more!
Good thing we have PLENTY of good doctors here! Oh...wait! They've all gone to Canada where they're appreciated and don't have to wade through mountains of insurance paperwork!
Unless every news channel & paper starts calling every thing as it truly is, half the population still doesn’t know. They are counting on the ignorance. It’s by design while the rest of us watch the train slowly go over the cliff.
This will have a devastating downstream impact, putting our country behind and making us weak. What the hell is wrong with the politicians letting this happen.
So it’s not enough that #FeloniousDon et al are running a chipper/shredder thru the Fed Gov’t.
Now they want to reduce the number of future doctors too.
I teach in English at UMass. Original post is about horrible situation, but old-ish news about the med school. No signs that this is happening on Amherst campus, and I think it would have happened already if it was going to.
“Not so much an error”? The title is totally misleading! Understandable written by someone whose lens for thinking of the entire university is the Med program, but still totally misleading
That's pretty much all accounted for already, isn't it? Their entire budget for 2023 was 3.79bn, so it's not like they can be completely self-sustained.
Well, yes and no. We don’t know what’s going to happen. No clue. And the outcome the arsonists want is total destruction; if that happens, no action of ours will salvage the situation. So panic reactions based on an outcome that can’t be mitigated accomplishes nothing and hurts us for other outcomes
Odd position to take that protecting young people means proactively denying them an opportunity. At the least give them an informed choice, otherwise you are deciding for them without knowing anything of their situation.
They will get much, much worse. I lived through the university budget cuts in Alaska in 2019, and when a system loses 20-30% of its funding (which is the scenario for R1 federal funds), entire colleges and campuses will be forced to close
Comments
Shame on Trump-Musk
* twirls mustache *
“Hahaha!!!”
…And suddenly, in that very instant, America was great again.
As it should. It's awful news.
https://bsky.app/profile/klab.bsky.social/post/3lk7bch2osk2r
This happens at all levels, undergrad, grad, and postdoc and this community is the bedrock of american science
Do you realize you are on the same slope as blaming immigrants for crime?
https://forbetterscience.com/2019/10/21/nasty-jasti-rao-or-whats-wrong-with-us-biomedicine/
https://retractionwatch.com/2020/05/20/associate-vp-for-research-at-georgia-state-is-up-to-10-retractions/
And stupid stuff, it makes us shout
r
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I don't believe there's any relation
We're gonna have to fight for them since they don't seem interested in actually expending effort properly.
What future Nobel Prize work is being delayed by these cuts?
Thank you for your comment! It is also useful for neurodivergent folks too. So many people benefit from having accurate alt text on images posted ☺️
I would however question why a university needs a billion dollar endowment if it isn’t for the benefit of students or research
And a lot of those students will never come back.
The school isn't being selfish here. Giving up an entire incoming class because they can't guarantee they won't be stranded, or worse, deported is a huge blow to their institution, as well.
If anything, it is a selfless act to make sure they don't bring students into a school that won't be around to graduate them.
I'd say still a very big alarm bell though.
My only criticism is the 1st sentence. Someone should have realized how awful it is.
The MAGA Nazi regime is setting back scientific and medical research years, possibly decades. How many people will die as a result of these genocidal policies?
Congress works by committee, which are run by the chairs
for the NIH, the Chairs are Sens Crapo Idaho and Sen Cassady Louisiana
so
IF YOU KNOW ANYONE, AT ALL LIVING IN THOSE STATES BEG THEM TO CALL THEIR SENATOR !
They are creating a problem which will become larger than COVID, for no reason and no gain. And yes, we are devastating our economy for generations. Opportunity costs will be staggering.
Pure saccharine bullshit.
Education and great HC make a great society.
Anything else brands UMass as an untrustworthy institution worth not a nickel of your debt because they will stab your fucken ass at first convenience.
BUT... It doesn't guarantee your spot, just, well, "priority consideration". Which means fuckall, now.
May reneg again. Admittees got screwed. Promise already broken.
No tea party, no minutemen to be seen anywhere.
How the mighty have fallen...
"In a statement to NBC10 Boston, a spokesperson confirmed that several dozen applicants who have received provisional offers for the Morningside Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences program had the offers rescinded."
https://www.nbcboston.com/news/local/umass-chan-rescinds-admission-for-biomedical-sciences-phd-program-amid-funding-cuts/3657096/
We are witnessing a disaster.
You would reach more people, when you add a good description into the Alt-text field.
That is pretty easy, especially, when your image just contain text.
This way, you support visually impaired people and everyone else, who rely on a good filled Alt-text.
#accessibility
And for everybody really.
Meaning, did they read “we are pleased to offer you …” (with no ‘contingent upon’ clause)?
And were students given the opportunity to accept these offers (and thus back away from others)?
A PhD takes ~ 5 years; that's a big commitment and it usually requires an applicant to move. /1
We need to do everything we can to be honest with these applicants (and, I believe, provide them job security).
Unquestionably bad, but not all of UMass.
State wide, and out of state, people don’t know that.
UMass is the whole school system.
This is one program in one branch for about 50 students. Accuracy matters, because the DOGE slash and burn faction will dismiss hyperbole as lies.
But the original post made it seem as if the entire UMass system is eliminating its incoming graduate class.
Accuracy matters.
DOGE is lying out of their ass about their ‘savings and fraud.’
No need to do the same.
Making America Loathed
Making America Unsafe
Making Americans Poor
Making Americans Sick
It was the worst of times
Citizens United and Shelby v Holder were our opening defeats. Handwriting’s been on the wall for over a decade.
Now they want to reduce the number of future doctors too.
https://www.umassfoundation.org/s/1355/22/interior.aspx?sid=1355&gid=1&pgid=6792
The last thing a program wants to happen is have a student in the middle of the program have no funding options.
After however long the next civil war goes and only if the side supporting academics wins
the fuck