It is no secret that UChicago is operating under severe financial strain. In fiscal year 2025, UChicago ran a budget deficit of $160 million—its total debt sat at over $6 billion. Its debt-to-asset ratio is over forty percent. This financial crunch is already limiting the breadth of our scholarship. Nowhere is this more evident than in the restructuring of the Division of the Arts & Humanities, which was directed to cut the number of its departments from fifteen to eight, curtail language instruction, and set minimum class and program sizes. UChicago is also pausing admissions for certain doctoral and master’s programs, and aims to reduce its internally-funded PhD population by thirty percent by 2030. It is seriously reducing faculty hiring, restructuring the Division of the Biological Sciences, scaling back plans for the new MENG building, and selling off or cutting funding to centers and institutes.

At the same time, the University is allegedly planning to expand the College from 7,400 students to 9,000 and to build a new dormitory. Putting aside the cost of construction (our last three dorms reportedly cost $100 million each), this means that UChicago will increase its undergraduate population by twenty percent without growing its research faculty. It is simultaneously restructuring divisions that service Core classes, which every undergraduate must take. All this probably means bigger classes taught in fewer areas, of which research faculty teach fewer yet. President Alivisatos said that in reaching these decisions, his team asked itself, “In a constrained environment, how do we ensure that our educational offerings relentlessly meet the high bar of rigor and excellence we bring to our students?” Apparently, this is their answer.

All of this raises the question: if our tight finances are forcing us to narrow our scholarship, restrict what we teach, and worsen classroom experiences, in what sense are we “academically free”? Is this how you picture a free, independent university operating? We wouldn’t be making these cuts if we could help it. Can a choice between a rock and a hard place ever be free? 

And remember: the sacrifices we have made so far are ones we forced ourselves to make. UChicago, unlike many peer institutions, has largely avoided direct federal scrutiny. But because of our financial precarity, even the government’s unfocused actions put us at risk. If our federal funding is impacted for any reason, UChicago could be forced to make more painful cuts. And there is reason to believe that more pain is coming. 

In FY24, UChicago received about $550 million in federal grants, half of which came from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). A substantial portion of NIH grant money supports “indirect” cost recovery. This money goes towards things like building maintenance and buying lab equipment, which are not directly tied to any particular project, yet are necessary for all research. Last year, the NIH drastically cut its funding for indirect recovery, which would have cost UChicago upwards of $50 million a year. A federal judge blocked this NIH directive, but indirect cost recovery rates are up for renegotiation in July 2026. Nothing would stop the government from cutting them again. 

Or take the government’s cuts to Medicaid. In FY24, UChicago Medicine (UCM) brought in $4 billion in revenue. Almost twenty percent of this—$800 million—came from Medicaid. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill will cut federal spending on Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program by $1.02 trillion, partly by cutting 10.5 million people from the programs by 2034. The impact of these cuts will ripple and ultimately hurt UCM’s bottom line, further compromising our deficit reduction. In this way, and countless others, federal actions may exacerbate our current debt crisis.

Defenders of UChicago’s administration will say I’m being unfair. Though they grew our debt, UChicago’s investments in new buildings and research directions have reaped significant returns. Besides, no one could have foreseen the election of a presidential administration so hostile to American academia. Granted, but the fact remains: UChicago would not be so vulnerable to federal actions if our budget were balanced. 


Our current precarity illustrates the fundamental tension inherent in the modern university. As an incubator of advanced research and scholarship, it depends on outside funding to exist. But every source of external funding creates dependencies on outsiders, and therefore impinges on our cherished ideals of academic autonomy. In the words of another former University president, Lawrence Kimpton: 

There are only two sources of income that will make us secure in our precious academic freedom: one is endowment income and the other is tuition income. All other sources are precarious or corrupting or both.

Paradoxically, a modern university must secure large amounts of outside funding while remaining independent from the whims of any particular financier. The task of managing this paradox falls to the university’s administrators. Their job is to keep the university on a stable and diversified financial footing. Without sound finances, the university cannot resist outside pressure without sacrificing its own excellence. Institutional autonomy is not God-given. Academic freedom isn’t free. 

Columbia sacrificed the independence of its regional studies departments to please the federal government. Our own parlous finances forced us to cut some of ours. What more could we be forced to do if the White House’s attention turns to us? It is not as though we have entirely escaped scrutiny: one of our professors made headlines for calling UChicago an evil, colonial landlord. The Departments of Justice and Homeland Security have already requested information on our admissions and international students. Inquiries or investigations may follow. How will we respond if our grants are frozen, or ideological auditors show up at our door? Harvard fought back because it could—its debt-to-asset ratio is one to nine. Can we?