Concerns about UWM’s Research Output Grow Amid Trump Admin Policies

While application and enrollment trends tick upwards at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, funding cuts and other policies at the federal level spurred discussions in the UWM Faculty Senate about the university’s R1 status.

“We want to do more than maintain our research status,” Chancellor Mark Mone said in an interview, “It won’t be easy in light of some of the direction that we’re hearing right now, but we want to find ways that we can work with all our sources of funding.”

The university admin has also warned of possible layoffs of faculty and staff if budget resources continue to thin. For now, however, specifics have not been provided, and the conversation stayed on UWM’s R1 status alongside modest enrollment increases.

The Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education, also known simply as the Carnegie Classification, categorizes universities across the United States based on their research output and activity. At the highest level, R1 universities are described as having “very high research spending and doctorate production.” UWM has been classified as R1 four separate times since 2016, including in 2025, according to the UWM Report. 

UWM is one of just two universities in Wisconsin with the classification, the other being UW-Madison. Nearly 190 other renowned institutions, such as Harvard, Princeton and Yale tout the R1 title as well. It also doubles as a way to attract prospective students.

With cuts to research grants and funding already hitting institutions nationwide, UWM faces a possible decline in research activity. Its prestigious “R1”  title could also be in jeopardy.

Federal sources and agencies often fund research at the collegiate level. As of early 2025, UWM had nearly $8 million in active grants from the National Institutes of Health alone, according to a statement from the chancellor, vice chancellor, and vice provost for research. Cuts by the Trump Administration, however, threaten to greatly reduce research reimbursements granted to UWM.

The indirect rate for campus research at UWM, which is the portion of research that federal agencies fund at universities, was 54 percent. The Trump Administration slashed that rate for the NIH to just 15 percent.

“We remain concerned about how the budget may affect our ability to deliver high-quality education and maintain our top-tier research,” said Ann Swartz, the co-chair of the Academic Planning and Budget Committee.

The move to cut NIH grants has made headlines several times in the months since Trump’s inauguration in late January. Although legal challenges threatened to halt the cuts to the NIH, the agency has now laid off hundreds of employees and cancelled billions in research grants, CBS reported.

While the future of UWM’s research status remains uncertain, possible budget reductions to ensure financial stability may force the university to make cuts where they otherwise wouldn’t.

“We do anticipate that these budget actions may require some non-renewals and layoffs across UWM, as determined by campus units as they consider long-term needs,” Mone stated in a release sent to the campus community.

But the Faculty Senate’s April meeting was not all bad news for UWM. According to Andrew Daire, the provost and vice chancellor of Academic Affairs at UWM, undergraduate enrollment data for the next academic year appears to be trending up. In his report to the Faculty Senate, he noted new first-year applications were up 23 percent since 2024. He also noted a 21 percent increase in admissions and a 5 percent bump in new transfer student applications over the same period.

“We’re quite hopeful for another successful year of new students and transfer students,” Daire said. “But I also want to underscore that our graduate numbers are not looking that good, and our international numbers are not looking that good.”

Daire alluded to the slump in graduate student applications being caused by circumstances beyond UWM’s control. He stopped short of tying it to other actions made by the Trump Administration, namely, the revocation of student visas, including 13 at UWM.

Although enrollment data for the upcoming academic year appears to offer some glimmer of hope, federal cuts to university research and dips in graduate student enrollment have more than rocked the boat.

Amid these cuts to higher education and concerns in the UWM Faculty Senate, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel published an op-ed by Mone. As the outgoing chancellor for Wisconsin’s second-largest four-year university, he wrote at length on the importance of university research.

Outside the meetings and statements, though, Mone seemed to stand on his proverbial soapbox to take a much more pointed position on the issue of cuts to research grants.

“New cures and medical treatments will evaporate, forcing struggling individuals to continue to suffer and wait,” he wrote. “And our curiosity will be stunted when we are not encouraged to explore new ideas or wonder at what we might accomplish next.”