How Much Could Trump’s Cuts Cost Your College?

Since Donald Trump began his second term in January 2025, his administration has enacted sweeping cuts and policy changes aimed at remaking higher education, plunging all of academia into financial uncertainty.

But the real, cumulative impact of the cuts has been hard to discern. Many of the policies are caught up in legal challenges. Congress has pushed back on others, and still more are years away from being fully implemented—with legislators getting a chance to change course in the meantime. As a result, estimates of the likely outcomes for individual schools vary widely, creating even more uncertainty and confusion for administrators, researchers, and students alike.

To understand the potential scale of the changes in North Carolina, The Assembly collected data on all 165 institutions here that are part of the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS). We calculated various scenarios across five business areas that are heavily impacted by the Trump administration’s changes.

Here’s what may be at stake for your college. You can also read our five big takeaways.

• The Big Picture
• Research Cuts
• Changes to Financial Aid
• International Enrollment Impacts
• Decreased Medicaid Spending
• An Adjusted Endowment Tax

The Big Picture

We analyzed changes to research, financial aid, international enrollment, Medicaid spending, and endowment taxes to estimate the current losses schools have suffered. We also calculated two projections for future losses in each area, one high and one low.

Here you can see the cumulative impact of either projection level.

All data comes from the 2023-2024 academic year except for estimates of endowment tax changes for Duke University and Davidson College, which are from 2024-2025. See detailed methodology notes.

Research Cuts

Within weeks of taking office, Trump began slashing federal research funding. His administration attempted to alter policies at the National Institutes of Health, cancel existing grants, and even pause spending altogether.

Our existing losses scenario estimates all research funding that has already been lost via canceled grants, including those in areas federal agencies have deprioritized, such as diversity, equity, and inclusion; COVID-19; and vaccines.

These estimates come from Grant Witness, a crowd-sourced data tracking project, so they may not be complete. For instance, UNC-Chapel Hill told The Assembly it lost $37.5 million in funding, while Grant Witness includes only $15.8 million.

Our other two scenarios try to project the outcome of a big cut the administration has threatened that would hit essentially all research institutions. This affects what are known as indirect cost rates or facilities and administration costs. 

When a university obtains a federal research grant, it also receives reimbursements for things that are necessary to do the research, like infrastructure and support staff time. Currently, universities have individually negotiated rates with the federal government, with some over 60%. The Trump administration attempted to cap rates at 15%.

Judges have so far ruled against the administration, and Congress recently prohibited the largest funders of federal research from enacting it in the next fiscal year. However, the court case is ongoing.

The high-end estimate projects annual research revenue if the administration succeeds in getting a 15% cap. But universities began crafting an alternate model for indirect costs last year, which Congress has signaled support for, so the low-end estimate assumes the impact will lead to rates falling somewhere in the middle. We went with 30%.

Data comes from Grant Witness and the National Science Foundation’s Higher Education Research and Development Survey. See detailed methodology notes.

Financial Aid Changes

The One Big Beautiful Bill Act included major updates to federal financial aid, especially for the Parent PLUS program, which provides loans to parents to pay for undergraduate degrees that aren’t covered by other financial aid, and Grad PLUS, which allows students to borrow up to the full cost of graduate degrees.

Starting in 2026, Parent PLUS loans will be capped at $20,000 per student per year and $65,000 total over the student’s lifetime. Grad PLUS loans have been eliminated, and federal graduate student loans will be similarly capped: $20,500 per year and $100,000 lifetime for most programs, or $50,000 and $200,000 lifetime for professional programs. The statute defining what counts as a professional degree is still under discussion, but the draft language includes medical doctorates, law, and theology master’s degrees.

Students paying more than that in tuition will have to find new lenders, primarily on the private market. But research from the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia’s Consumer Finance Institute found that 40% of graduate students who borrowed over those limits wouldn’t qualify for private loans. The Century Foundation found that a similar proportion of U.S. adults would have trouble qualifying for Parent PLUS loans.

Our low-end estimate assumes that, once these changes have been fully implemented, all Parent PLUS borrowers and graduate students who rely on loans (which typically doesn’t include nonprofessional doctoral students) will borrow the maximum amount allowed under the new law, and 40% of them won’t be able to receive private loans for the additional amount. Colleges will offer financial aid for the rest, meaning they lose any revenue above the caps for those students. The high-end estimate assumes that students who can’t get private loans will decide not to attend, meaning colleges would lose 40% of their total revenue from Parent PLUS and graduate borrowers.

Data comes from Federal Student Aid and IPEDS. See detailed methodology notes.

International Students

International students have become a significant source of revenue for colleges in recent decades because they largely pay full tuition, with the exception of doctoral students, student-athletes, and some merit scholarship recipients. But the Trump administration has targeted international enrollment, going so far as to tout the number of student visas it has revoked.

Research from NAFSA: Association of International Educators estimates that those changes will lead to a 17% decrease in new international students. Our high-end estimate assumes that’s how much international revenue colleges and universities will lose once current students complete their degrees.

But the Institute of International Education’s 2025 Open Doors Report found that international undergraduate enrollment actually increased by 5.3% this fall, while graduate enrollment fell 14.5%. The low-end estimate assumes that revenue from international students follows the same pattern.

If that’s true, schools could already be seeing lost revenue. However, not all schools will follow the national pattern. UNC-CH provided data showing that both its undergraduate and graduate international populations increased in fall 2024.

Data comes from IPEDS. See detailed methodology notes.

Decreased Medicaid Spending

The One Big Beautiful Bill Act also included major changes to Medicaid, which provides a substantial portion of patient revenue for the four North Carolina universities with hospital systems.

Health policy organization KFF published an analysis of the bill that found North Carolina would see an 11% Medicaid funding cut when it is fully implemented. That is our low-end estimate of revenue lost due to the changes to Medicaid.

The high-end estimate assumes North Carolina will eventually roll back its 2023 expansion of Medicaid, which many experts say is likely if the legislature doesn’t change state law. The expansion population accounts for 21% of all enrollees, according to another KFF analysis, so the estimate assumes spending would decrease proportionally. 

Data comes from university and health system financial audits. See detailed methodology notes.

An Adjusted Endowment Tax

The last major change from the Trump budget bill impacted only two of North Carolina’s wealthiest schools: Duke and Davidson.

Davidson got lucky: As part of the negotiations, Congress exempted schools with fewer than 3,000 students—which includes Davidson—from paying the pre-existing 1.4% endowment tax. The change saves Davidson an estimated $1 million.

Duke initially appeared to dodge an increase, but leaders now expect that the endowment’s investment return means its tax will rise to 4%. That could result in an additional $40 million levy for the Blue Devils.

Data comes from university audits. See detailed methodology notes.

Bonus: Potential Losses Per Capita

Below, see the potential high and low estimates of funding cuts per student at each institution. Note that the axes in this graph are logarithmic, so Duke’s high estimate of potential losses per capita at over $60,000 is over three times as large as the next closest school (UNC-Chapel Hill, which could suffer around $18,000 in losses per student under the most extreme cuts).

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