MORGANTOWN, W.Va (WDTV) – On January 22, 2025, West Virginia University Senior Biochemistry Student, Gracie Hines, found out she had been accepted into the school’s Biomedical Sciences Graduate School.
Just over a month later, she received an email informing her that her admission to the program was being rescinded.
“None of the students were directly informed, but I didn’t know it would affect it so much as to cancel PhD admissions,” said Hines.
The email citing “proposed federal budget cuts” as the main reason for limiting admissions to the program, likely in reference to cuts at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and The Science Foundation (NSF), which many universities rely on.
WVU released a statement to 5 News saying:
“The West Virginia University Health Sciences Office of Research and Graduate Education is limiting admission to its PhD programs due to the unforeseen budgetary challenges resulting from proposed cuts to federal research funding.
We’ve met with the students and faculty in the affected areas, and we will continue support our existing students, faculty and staff and current ongoing research initiatives. If circumstances change in the future, admission to these PhD programs will be reevaluated.
Our leadership teams continue to work with key constituents and policymakers to seek reconsideration of these proposed federal cuts.
Indirect costs are partial reimbursements for real costs essential to support human and physical infrastructure required for university research programs. Without support for these costs, our nation’s research universities cannot maintain research programs essential for continued national prosperity.”
This is just the latest setback for the university.
In 2023, President Gordon Gee addressed a $45 million budget deficit and program cuts.
This led to outrage from the local higher-education community.
Hines is hopeful that the new president might be able to turn some of that around.
“We’re getting a new president really soon, so hopefully he’ll find a way to fix things without hindering student progress because whenever we were first talking about that initial budget issue, a lot of professors from various departments got fired.”
The future of the medical research programs at WVU remains to be seen.
As for Hines, she still plans on continuing her education at WVU, with the hope of getting into pharmacy school.
She is warning that if the cuts don’t stop, many more people will be affected.
“If this trend continues, which, by the looks of it, it probably will, then not only are PhD and doctorate admissions are going to be halted then more people are going to start getting fired.”
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