The great poaching: America's brain drain begins

The Trump administration’s spending cuts and restrictions on foreign students are triggering a brain drain — and American scientists are panicking.Why it matters: U.S. researchers' fears are coming true. America’s science pipeline is drying up, and countries like China are seizing the opportunity to surge ahead.“This is such a race for being the science powerhouse that you never fully recover,” says Marcia McNutt, president of the National Academy of Sciences. “You might accelerate back up to 60, but you can’t make up for those years when you were at a standstill while the competition was racing ahead.”Driving the news: The National Science Foundation, which funds much of America's fundamental science research, is already doling out grants at its slowest pace in 35 years, The New York Times reports.More cuts to science could come with the "big, beautiful bill."Universities are also watching with bated breath as the administration tries to limit the number of foreign students studying in the U.S..Harvard is pushing back, but could face a total ban on recruiting internationally. The Trump administration says it will "aggressively revoke" visas for Chinese students studying in "critical fields."By the numbers: While American universities are rescinding offers to incoming PhD students, other countries are recruiting heavily from U.S. labs.The journal Nature analyzed data from its jobs platform to track where scientists are looking for work. In the first few months of the Trump administration, there were jumps in the the number of U.S. applicants looking for jobs in Canada (+41%), Europe (+32%), China (+20%) and other Asian countries (+39%), compared to the same period in 2024.U.S. jobs saw fewer applications from candidates in Canada (–13%) and Europe (–41%).Case in point: France's Aix-Marseille University, which made headlines for earmarking millions of dollars for U.S. scientists, closed its application window after receiving a flood of apps.After American Nobel laureate Ardem Patapoutian's federal grant was frozen, he got an email from China offering 20 years of funding if he relocates his lab, The New York Times' Kate Zernike writes. He declined.“This is a once-in-a-century brain gain opportunity,” the Australian Strategic Policy Institute wrote in a brief.The other side: The White House argues that its changes to the system will usher in a golden age of science and rebuild public trust. President Trump has also suggested that spots freed up by rejecting international students could be filled by American applicants.But professors say this isn't entirely realistic."In hard sciences, in astronomy and physics and computer science, for example, there’s no way you would fill that hole with local applicants of comparable quality," says Chris Impey, an astronomer at the University of Arizona.What to watch: “The optimistic part of all of us thinks science is strong enough to outlast one administration, and for a while I thought that, but the hit to young people is at the center of the whole enterprise,” Impey says. “It’s like pulling the rug out from under the whole thing."It's not just brain drain of existing talent, he says. Students who are in high school and college now and thinking about a career in research might reconsider. "There’s plenty of things smart kids can do. They don’t have to go into science."At the same time, McNutt says she tells students: "If you went into graduate school in the fall of this year, by the time you get your PhD, this madness may be over. You come out with your new PhD ready to fill the gap."

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