What’s in store for UCSD? With the leaders of the campus largely mom, the teachers and the students are at the forefront – San Diego Union -Tribune

Is my research grant about to be reduced? Do I have to fire staff? Why am I in the dark about it?

Anxious questions dominate the conversations at UC San Diego, where the rare updates of campus leaders have left an information vacuum in the weeks following that the school learned that it could lose hundreds of millions of dollars in funding.

Chancellor Pradeep Khosla and his staff published messages on the issue on a school website, but above all talked in general, referring to readers to federal websites that are also light on details.

“I no longer read the messages from the campus because they say nothing,” said Brandon Joe, a junior specializing in mathematics and computer science.

The San Diego Union-Tribune spoke with 30 teachers, administrators, students and staff of the way in which the school faces the prospect of losing more than $ 150 million in NIH funding intended to cover the general costs in research, as well as other funds.

Most of them repugnted to speak publicly, the antagonization of school officials or attract the attention of the Trump administration. But almost everyone to which Union-Tribune spoke said, in one way or another, that they want school leaders to begin to provide clear, timely and useful information on the cuts that the school is confronted.

Matt Nagel, director of communications of the UCSD, said that the administration had shared “a number of communications, meetings and forums in the city of our vice-keepers and deans who addressed federal problems”.

Khosla refused four Union-Tribune requests in the past two months to discuss the subject.

Professors in particular express their concern concerning the fate of specific research fields, particularly in health and medicine. Tensions have increased this week when the Trump administration told an eminent scientist to take a break or limit 16 clinical trials, the most devoted to the treatment or prevention of HIV / AIDS.

Earlier, a survey conducted in the school bioinformatics and biology program revealed that the vast majority of teachers who supervise doctoral students had decided not to fill the openings they have for the rest of the year due to the prospect of cuts. Normally, these slots are rarely not filled for a long time, because students covets them and the university needs their help.

Scientists also fear that the ax will be able to finance the UCSD Institution of Oceanography scripps, a leader in climate research.

Scripps operates the Keeling curve, which measures carbon concentration every day in the earth’s atmosphere – producing data that was essential to the adoption of the Paris Agreement, an international climate treaty from which President Donald Trump has removed the United States earlier this year.

The lack of information has led some teachers and students to describe the atmosphere of the UCSD in dark terms.

“On campus, energy has disappeared,” said Dr. Davey Smith, director of infectious diseases. “It looks like a patient gets the news from a terminal phase. Biomedical research is dying. What does this mean for new remedies? My career? University? I have no idea.

“I have empathy for the university on this subject. I often discover cuts in my region before they do it. Things happen so quickly. “

Adalia Luo, editor of The Guardian, a student newspaper, also expressed her apprehension.

“There are so many things that are unknown here, it is as if we did not know what to be the most concerned,” said Luo, a junior specializing in international studies.

She said that the students feared that they could face larger classes, fewer educational assistants, shorter hours at the Geisel library and a hike of tuition fees.

Anxiety occurs at a time when it is not clear how long 12 years of Khosla, because the chancellor will last.

Four of his teachers and friends say he hopes to succeed Michael Drake as president of the University of California system. Drake will retire in June.

The UC Board of Regents is expected to announce a new president in May, according to two members of the SCHF of the UCSD.

Khosla, 67, chaired the greatest expansion in the history of the UCSD. Registration increased by almost 16,000, reaching a record of 44,256 last fall; The school now has twice as many students as Stanford. Khosla also pushed the number of students in campus housing at 22,000, second at the national level only to the UCLA.

His leadership was congratulated by many, notably Rich Leib, a businessman from San Diego who serves as a UC regent. Drake also publicly applauded Khosla’s stewardship.

The UC does not disclose its list of finalists when choosing a president. And sometimes the regents appointed presidents who were not very well known to be in the running, like Janet Napolitano, the former American secretary for internal security.

But on the UCSD campus, the teachers are super focused on the presidency of the UC but on potential cuts.

The situation led Bradley Moore, an expert in marine biomedicine, to make a decision that tears him away.

“It will be the first time in 20 years that I have not participated in recruitment (a doctoral student) for the fall,” he said. “These are intelligent and talented people who have invested a lot of time. Now they consider science as a profession that might not work for them. It is a pure tragedy.”

Originally published: March 30, 2025 at 5:00 a.m.