It’s not only big-name institutions that are feeling the effects of President Donald Trump’s attacks on higher education.
The administration’s decision to freeze nearly $800 million in funding for Northwestern University has gotten a lot of attention. But on the other side of Chicago, in the Far South Side neighborhood of Roseland, Chicago State University has been hit by federal cuts as well.
The public college is the only one in the state with a predominantly Black student body, and it has far less money than a place like Northwestern with which to support them. So far, the school has lost about $5 million in federal grants.
Chicago State President Zaldwynaka “Z” Scott spoke with WBEZ about what that means for her university and its students. This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
There has been a lot of attention paid to how Trump’s attacks on higher education are affecting big-name, wealthy schools like Columbia and Northwestern. But I’m wondering what kind of impacts you’re seeing at Chicago State, which is a public access institution.
The impact on us is real and unimaginable. We have lost five grants that had the capacity to make real changes in the lives of our students.
The National Science Foundation had been funding the Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation in STEM for more than 20 years. We were the grant holder for our region, and we supported research and activities for students in about 10 to 12 community colleges and colleges in our area. That grant has been lost.
That means the group of students that we train to support our faculty in teaching, called learning assistants — that program is now not funded. Research assistants in our faculty labs — that program is no longer funded, because it was funded through that grant we lost.
We will lose about four staff members who were supporting that grant. So, there’s real, true job loss in that too. The faculty member who supported our students in being learning assistants and research assistants — he no longer has that funding for his work. So, it’s just devastating to us as an institution.
What gap is left when a place like Chicago State is dealing with these federal funding challenges?
Because of our student population and the fact that we are so strong in the sciences, we graduate students who move on to Ph.D. programs. We’re living in a world where minority Ph.D.s only comprise about 1% to 3% of all Ph.D.s in the country. So, if that pathway closes coming out of Chicago State, it will indeed have an impact on science. It will impact innovation, and it will also impact diversity in science
Everyone knows diversity in any field, any business, creates more innovation.
Chicago State has had challenges that predate the Trump administration, most notably a large decline in state funding. State lawmakers are considering a higher education funding formula that proponents say would stabilize and make funding for Illinois’ public universities more equitable. You testified in support of the legislation a few weeks ago.
Our biggest competitor is nowhere. So, we’re not competing against the University of Chicago or University of Illinois Chicago, we’re competing against not going to college at all.
The data is clear: College changes everything. It changes your lifespan, your civic engagement, the way in which you engage with your right to vote.
Our ability to send that message and promote that message — we don’t have it. We have to make real, hard choices when it comes to how we fund the university and what activities we can fund. And our advertising and promotion budget is limited. The inability to message in our neighborhoods about the value of college and the value of Chicago State truly hurts our enrollment.
I am advocating for the funding formula alongside seven of our public university presidents … because we know there are so many things that we can’t do without stable and adequate funding, and this is a real opportunity for Illinois to get it right.
Is there anything that is giving you hope in this particularly challenging moment?
There are people who have been very vocal about the challenges. There are policy organizations that are working the phones. We’ve seen our citizens take to the streets, and we’ve seen our public officials engage with institutions to determine the extent of the harm. So, that gives me hope.
I think if you don’t have hope, you don’t have anything. So, I will continue to hope that good people will continue to rise and continue to engage.
For this story, we used an AI tool, Otter.ai, to convert spoken words gathered in reporting to text. When using AI tools, we make sure it meets our ethical and journalism standards. As with all of our stories, this story was reviewed and edited by our team to ensure accuracy. Using artificial intelligence in this way, allows us to quickly report, write news stories and helps us provide fact-based news. Let us know your thoughts on our use of AI tools here.
Lisa Kurian Philip covers higher education for WBEZ, in partnership with Open Campus. Follow her on Twitter @LAPhilip.