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US PhD admissions shrink as fears over Trump’s cuts take hold

Some doctoral programmes are admitting no students at all amid uncertainty about federal science funding.
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  1. Alexandra Witze
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Phoenix-Avery Sarían has been interested in astronomy ever since her mother bought her a telescope as a child. But the fourth-year university student faces a cosmic challenge in reaching the next stage of her academic career: enrolling in a PhD programme.

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Nature 647, 15-16 (2025)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-025-03417-6

The writer of this article does part-time book editing for the American Astronomical Society, which commissioned the survey of physics and astronomy departments described in this story.

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