The Collapse of American Science
Abigail Muccilli
4/20/2025
The slow death of publicly-funded research in the United States represents more than just another austerity measure—it is a direct attack on the working class and a betrayal of international scholars. Since the first waves of NIH budget cuts hit in 2023, the consequences have rippled through universities and research institutions with devastating force, exposing the brutal contradictions of an academic system built on the backs of underpaid and overworked researchers while administrators and pharmaceutical executives reap the rewards.
The signs of collapse are undeniable across the United States. Labs that once pioneered breakthroughs in medicine and public health are facing budget cuts that make lab operations impossible. Graduate students who entered their programs with dreams of curing diseases find themselves trapped in financial ruin, burdened by six-figure student debts for degrees that may never lead to stable employment. Postdoctoral researchers, nearly half of whom come from abroad, face the cruel reality of revoked visas and shattered careers, their years of specialized training rendered worthless by a system that views them as disposable labor.
The statistics paint a grim picture. According to the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, nearly one-third of principal investigators, those who lead labs, have been forced to lay off staff in the past year alone, while fifteen percent of academic labs have closed entirely. These numbers only hint at the human toll, as it cannot account for the cancer research abandoned mid-discovery, the pandemic prevention work left unfinished, nor the generations of scientists now leaving the field in despair.
As America retreats from scientific investment, other nations are seizing the opportunity. Germany's Max Planck Society reports a twenty-five percent surge in applications from U.S.-based scientists, lured by living wages, strong labor protections, and respect for their work. Canada's Global Talent Stream visa program has fast-tracked over a thousand American-trained researchers in the past year alone. Even China, long viewed as America's scientific rival, is aggressively recruiting displaced researchers through its Thousand Talents Program, offering resources and stability that the U.S. no longer provides.
Behind this brain drain lies an even uglier truth—the exploitation baked into America's academic labor system. Graduate students routinely work eighty-hour weeks for stipends below poverty level, with forty-three percent carrying over $100,000 in student debt according to a 2023 study in eLife. Postdocs, many in their thirties with advanced degrees, earn barely $50,000 annually while universities skim over half of every NIH grant for "overhead" costs. This is only a euphemism universities use when speaking of their bloated administrative salaries and vanity construction projects.
It is clear that the broader system remains rigged in favor of corporate interests. Pharmaceutical companies that profit from NIH-funded discoveries spent $130 billion on stock buybacks in 2023—triple their research investments—while lobbying against drug price reforms. Taxpayer-funded NIH research de-risks early-stage drug development. Companies then privatize these discoveries, patent them, and charge exorbitant prices, even though public dollars paid for the foundational science. The $130 billion spent on buybacks (as compared to the $43 billion on research and development) reveals where profits truly go: not to innovation or affordability, but to shareholders and executives. These funds could have erased the student debt of every STEM PhD in America twice over, or funded 10 years of NIH budget shortfalls. Instead, it vanished into Wall Street. This is wealth extraction, not reinvestment.
The ripple effects of this crisis are already reshaping the pipeline of future scientists, casting a dark shadow over those considering PhD programs in the U.S. Prospective graduate students—once drawn to America’s reputation as the global leader in research—now face a system in freefall, where funding cuts have turned admissions into a brutal lottery. Programs that once guaranteed full funding are slashing stipends or quietly shifting costs onto students, forcing applicants to weigh the gamble of a PhD against the certainty of crushing debt. International applicants, who once saw U.S. degrees as a golden ticket, are now reconsidering, with visa restrictions and lab closures making America a riskier bet than Europe or Canada. Even those who secure spots will enter a broken academic labor market, where the odds of landing a tenure-track position have plummeted to near-zero, and where the only guaranteed outcome is years of exploitative labor for poverty wages. The message is clear: the next generation of scientists are being set up for failure. Unless they organize to demand debt-free education, living wages, and a system that values their labor over administrative greed, the system will continue to work as it is intended to.
Capitalism doesn’t want thriving, independent scientists—it wants a precarious labor force desperate enough to accept exploitative conditions. By starving public institutions like the NIH of funding while inflating military-police budgets, Congress ensures two outcomes critical to maintaining the status quo: a cheap and disposable workforce and the privatization of knowledge. Crushing student debt forces scientists into a hyper-competitive scramble for scarce grants. This desperation funnels talent into corporate labs or military-adjacent research, where innovation serves capital, not the public. Chronic underfunding pushes research toward private-sector "partnerships," where public dollars subsidize risky early-stage science—but patents and profits are hoarded by corporations. Meanwhile, militarized budgets thrive because war and policing are reliable revenue streams. Just look at how Lockheed Martin’s stock soars while NIH grant success rates plummet to 20%. NIH budgets stagnate because curing diseases doesn’t generate quarterly returns, while Raytheon gets blank checks to "innovate" new ways to kill. Capitalism rewards shareholders, not solutions.
Though the direct impacts of this have been the main focus, the consequences extend far beyond academia. Seventy-five percent of FDA-approved drugs trace their origins to NIH research, from mRNA vaccines to cutting-edge cancer therapies. The biotechnology sector, built on this public science, generates nearly $3 trillion for the U.S. economy annually. As labs close and researchers flee, America's medical and technological future is being outsourced by design. Congress’s choice to gut science funding while lavishing nearly $900 billion on militarized police and endless wars is not an oversight; it’s a reflection of capitalism’s core priorities. Under this system, state budgets serve two key functions: protecting capital and suppressing dissent. Police and military spending safeguard property, enforce inequality, and secure geopolitical dominance for corporate interests, while underfunding science and social programs entrenches reliance on profit-driven "solutions" (like privatized healthcare or Big Pharma monopolies). NIH cuts don’t just slow medical progress—they reinforce a paradigm where life-saving research depends on corporate goodwill or Pentagon spin-offs.
Meanwhile, militarization funnels public wealth into the hands of weapons manufacturers and surveillance firms, turning systemic crises—poverty, addiction, unrest—into problems to be policed rather than healed. The U.S. military-industrial complex is not just about national defense, it’s a highly lucrative business model. Companies like Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Boeing, and Northrop Grumman dominate the weapons industry, securing billions in government contracts year after year. Unlike scientific research, which requires long-term investment with uncertain financial returns, war and policing provide guaranteed, repeatable revenue streams for corporations and shareholders. Lockheed Martin’s shareholders get richer from each new war, therefore, the ruling class would rather spend $1.7 trillion on a single fighter jet program (F-35) than guarantee free college for STEM students. Capitalism rewards short-term exploitation (stock buybacks, patent monopolies) over long-term collective good (curing diseases, climate solutions). Additionally, politicians can fearmonger about foreign threats to justify military spending, but diseases (even pandemics) don’t create the same urgency for long-term funding. COVID-19 relief was temporary, while military budgets always grow. This isn’t fiscal responsibility; it’s capitalism weaponizing the state to prioritize control over care.
The path forward demands more than restored budgets—it requires a fundamental reimagining of scientific labor. Student debt for STEM PhDs must be canceled. University overhead on grants should be capped at twenty percent. Visa protections must shield international researchers from exploitation. Most crucially, the workers who produce scientific knowledge must seize control of their labor. Universities fight tooth and nail against unionization efforts, as seen in Colombia's illegal union-busting campaign in 2023. However, the 2025 University of California postdoc strike, which won twenty-three percent raises through militant organizing, proved that change is possible when workers fight back.
The United States is sacrificing its scientific future—not because it must, but because it values profits over knowledge. The choice for working people is stark: either fight for a science system that serves the many, or watch as America auctions off the livelihood of its working class to the highest bidder.