The iconic columns on the University of Missouri-Columbia campus (University of Missouri photo).
University of Missouri faculty and staff received an email Monday morning from MU President Mun Choi announcing plans to begin reducing expenses in response to the Trump administration’s federal funding cuts.
Choi explained that the university’s administration will begin cost-cutting measures for this fiscal year in the coming weeks, citing a “reduction in indirect cost returns as well as cancellation of specific federal projects.” The email also acknowledged that federal cuts are likely to continue into fiscal year 2026, which begins July 1.
“We’re not sure exactly what’s going to happen at the federal level,” said Matt Martens, MU’s provost and executive vice chancellor for academic affairs. “So we are preparing for different sets of eventualities.”
Martens said academic units will be expected to evaluate open positions where hiring can potentially be delayed if budget cuts are made, but a hiring freeze has not been discussed at this point.
“All of this, of course, is contingent on available funding going forward, but my hope and intent, along with President Choi, would be that we would be able to continue those student success investments as well as continuing to hire through the initiative,” Martens said.
In 2021, MizzouForward was launched as a 10-year strategy to strengthen research through a $1.5 billion investment in hiring and student-focused initiatives. By April of last year, a news release reported that MizzouForward had hired almost half of the 150 new faculty members it aims to bring to MU.
Thomas Spencer, the vice chancellor for research and economic development, said the university’s largest federal funding sources for research are the National Institutes of Health and the United States Department of Agriculture, and that federally-funded research has grown at MU in recent years.
“We really have not, at this point, seen a severe disruption in federal agency funding for our research and creative works mission at the university,” Spencer said. “We’re still billing the federal government and getting paid for the research grants and contracts that we have.”
Conversations relating to research funding will continue to evolve, especially amid legal challenges to the NIH’s 15% cap on grant funding for indirect research costs. In fiscal year 2024, MU received $98 million in NIH funding. Of that total amount, $28.7 million accounted for indirect costs.
“Of course there’s some concern, appropriately so I think, related to the uncertainty,” Martens said. “But by and large our faculty are keeping their heads down continuing to do the important work at the institution.”
This story originally appeared in the Columbia Missourian. It can be republished in print or online.