A record number of graduates will receive their Ph.D.s from Rochester Institute of Technology this weekend.
The private university has more doctoral research students than ever, is bringing in more federal research funding, and has the most grant applications pending in school history.
“Even with all you've heard about in the last year, research is actually growing at RIT,” said Ryne Raffaelle, RIT's vice president of research. “I think that would surprise a lot of people who just see the negative on the nightly news, and they don’t necessary have the full context.”
Back in December, RIT opened a new research building “full of labs” Raffaelle said.
The numbers and optimism belie predictions of a “graduate-school collapse” amid slumping enrollment, rising costs and a Trump administration focused on what it has deemed to be frivolous research and liberal bias in the nation’s colleges and universities.
“I don't want to diminish the turmoil that we've all had to live through in the last year, and the consequences of that,” Raffaelle said. “I mean, the time, effort and money wasted is undeniable.”
But while Syracuse and other institutions have cut academic programs, or laid off staff and paused or cut graduate student admissions, RIT has stayed the course.
The university expects to confer 76 doctoral degrees this upcoming commencement weekend — a number that should raise RIT's Carnegie Classification, helping draw more top research grants and faculty. And that number is only expected to rise in future years, as the number of enrolled Ph.D. students at RIT surpassed 500 for the first time this academic year, reaching 517 — up from 246 back in 2016. RIT's first doctoral program launched in 1990, the nation's first in imaging science.
Last year, the university set a record for new research awards at $106 million, officials said, and is up to $70 million so far this year.
“What's in vogue today?” Raffaelle asked, in answering what sets RIT apart. “What are people looking for? What are families seeking? What is the government promoting? Oh my gosh, it is high placement rates in, you know, cutting-edge technology, right? So we're very well-positioned in the market."
Schools like Syracuse are overhauling a legacy curriculum and slashing degree programs that are no longer relevant, many of which were found to little or no student interest. Meanwhile, RIT’s research portfolio largely emerged over the past 20 years, he said, and is well-aligned with government and industry needs. Think cyber security, quantum theory, healthcare technology, semiconductors and microelectronics.
“You come to RIT, we train you to hit the ground running, Day One, get a job,” he continued. “It's not blue-sky research, ivory tower. We're kind of the antithesis of that.”
The story gets more complex across town at the University of Rochester, with its medical school heavily influenced by the happenings at the National Institutes of Health. RIT receives NIH funding, but nothing to the level of UR.
'High level of uncertainty'
Take all the federally funded research programs and sum them together, and they are not as big as NIH. And, because of that, it's got a disproportionate amount of the attention from the Trump administration — with one result being fewer awards.
UR received $188 million from NIH two years ago, but less than $168 million last year, records show.
“I'm optimistic that this year is not a normal year,” said Steve Dewhurst, UR vice president for research.
The labs that principally rely on NIH funding are in the medical center.
“We have slowed recruitment (of graduate students) because of that concern about how many new grant awards do we have” Dewhurst said. “Meaning, effectively, how many homes do we have that are well funded?”
The degree of slowdown is program-specific, he said, not across the board. For context, though: The UR School of Medicine typically sees upwards of 40 research project grants each year. Last year, it got 15, Dewhurst said.
Campus-wide, though, “overall, our funding is very largely stable,” he said. And, like at RIT, the number of UR grant submissions is up more than 5% in the past year.
Universities across the nation are experiencing significant government delays in grant award decisions and reimbursements — blamed on the massive staffing cuts by the Department of Government Efficiency.
But while the Trump administration made much ado about rescinding federal research grants, universities appealed and many — including at UR and RIT — were quietly restored. Congress restored funding to federal R&D agencies. And a proposed cap on indirect research costs, covering lab maintenance, building utilities, and equipment needs, was rejected by the courts and similarly nullified by Congress.
“I think one area that is significant is the impact on young scientists,” he aid, “folks that we're training in our graduate programs or our postdoctoral programs. Understandably, many of them may be looking at science right now and wondering, Is that the right career path for me? It is a real concern to myself and to many of us in in research — we do not want to lose a generation of brilliant minds because of an environment where there is a high level of uncertainty about the funding climate.”
That climate grew more uncertain last month when Trump abruptly fired the entire National Science Foundation board, while pushing for deep cuts to the agency that administers federal science grants. A week later -- May 1 — marked “National Decision Day” for prospective graduate students to select a program and put down a deposit.
'We've lost our way'
“It's very important to all of us to communicate better,” Dewhurst said, about "the value of what we do and why it is that benefits our nation and individuals.”
Government investment in research and development post-World War II is what produced jet aircraft, satellites, digital computers, life-saving drugs and vaccines, and an overall increase in household income, he said.
Yet, he continued: “At least in this present moment, we've somehow lost our way with bipartisan support for research.”
Dewhurst was a principal investigator on one of the grants that was not restored, funding a collaboration between UR and RIT that created a pathway into the scientific workforce for students who are deaf.
“It was to train post-doctoral scientists,” Dewhurst said, “and we had to discontinue the program, and the folks in the program needed to go find jobs elsewhere, and we weren't able to bring in a subsequent class.”
It wasn't the only collaborative UR-RIT program to be defunded. But it was unique nationally, and distinctive to a Rochester community recognized as having one of the world’s largest per-capita deaf populations.
“You know, anytime you go into a coffee shop, you see in Rochester people communicating by American Sign Language,” he said. “You don't see that in other towns and cities, and it's a tremendous part of the fabric of our community, and it's one that I would very much like to see better represented in our scientific and medical workforces.”
