Who would have guessed that some funding cuts in the United States of America would throw the entire higher education system in Australia into crisis?
Not me.
Before you get the idea that I oppose all sharing of research and research funding with foreign entities, I don’t. Scientific collaboration, by its nature, doesn’t respect national borders. If the best researcher in some area is Australian, it makes sense for American researchers to collaborate with him or her, and the results will almost certainly benefit Americans.
It’s not like raw brainpower or cleverness are exclusively American qualities or that the benefits of scientific inquiry can or should be limited by borders. If funding good research means some of the dollars leave US soil, that’s no different than purchasing raw materials from another country in order to build something useful. You’re stupid not to buy the best quality from wherever it is.
Why were US taxpayers funding Australian universities in the first place?
I think you should be giving that money back.
— Your Waifu is Trash (@ProjectVirginia) March 22, 2025
On the other hand, if asking researchers to justify their funding imperils the entire higher education establishment in a country, then you know that country has been taking a free ride on the United States’ taxpayers’ dime. It’s one thing to provide subsidies to a project of mutual benefit; it’s another to pay the freight while the other sits back and enjoys the fruits of your labor.
It turns out that Australia is like that jerk in a group project who sits back and lets you do all the work, expecting to get an A because you did a great job. Everybody has been part of a team where a freeloader sits back and watches the others work their asses off so that he can enjoy the kudos for their work.
Australian Academy of Science chief executive Anna-Maria Arabia told the Australian Financial Review the federal government had to be quicker to respond to the cuts rather than choosing to “wait and see”.
“It is incumbent on the prime minister to call an emergency meeting of the National Science and Technology Council, which he chairs, compelling all ministers to the table to share intel and comprehensively assess the extent of Australia’s exposure to a reduction in US R&D investment across portfolios,” Ms Arabia said.
“The consequences of inaction are profound with consequences for every Australian’s way of life,” she said.
“We don’t know the full extent of the pain US measures will inflict on Australia, but we do know it’s coming, and we have a chance to put in place strategies that will allow Australia to capture opportunities whilst mitigating the worst of the damage.”
The cut of funding could leave a $600 million hole in the efforts of Australian researchers, with the US the largest research partner of Australia.
Uh, wut? $600 million? Are you sure that is right? Just how large is Australia’s population? 27 million? What percentage of the Australian research budget is funded by the United States?!
Now figure in how focused “scientific” research has been on weird and useless ideologies under the Biden administration and ask yourself how much taxpayers have been spending on bizarre DEI inquiries and training. Do you know? I don’t, and the questions asked by the Trump administration to Australian universities as part of their vetting suggest that Australian researchers are worried that they might lose their funding for the genderqueer implications of black holes on intersectional oppression.
Perhaps, perhaps not. That is a different, though significant question.
What does matter in this case is that the Australian research universities are apparently underfunded by Australia and overfunded by the United States. If the research is mutually beneficial, then we should consider partially funding it. If not, then don’t. But if Australia depends on the US taxpayer to prop up their higher education system the balance is way off. How much research funding flows from Australia to the United States?
I’ve been around enough scientists in my time to know that collaborations can benefit everyone and that knowledge has no borders. But I’ve also been around governments enough to know that when you are spending others’ money, your attention to the efficient and proper use of it drops like a rock.
“The federal government must push back on the Trump administration’s blatant foreign interference in our independent research in the strongest possible terms,” NTEU president Alison Barnes said.
The funding cut is another step in President Trump’s ‘America First’ agenda, with “DEI, woke gender ideology and the green new deal” listed as reasons why the US had announced a “temporary pause” in grants.
How many countries have gotten so used to the free flow of US taxpayer money into their pockets that they take it for granted?
Without knowing more, I can’t judge whether all this money went to worthy projects. Perhaps all of it did. Or perhaps we are learning how mice behave when using date-rape drugs since we fund that sort of research, too. It’s not like all that funding went to vital projects here at home…
In either case, Americans have shown a great willingness to fund scientific research. But our willingness is not unlimited, and other countries should be reminded of that. If the research is so vital, they should kick in a lot more to the common interest.
