A LaGuardia Community College STEM grant program was cut by the Trump Administration and the professor is calling for it to be reinstated. Wikimedia Commons Photo by Tdorante10
By Reem Jaafar, Ph.D.
The underperformance of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics programs has been a persistent problem within the New York City educational system, but actions in Washington will only make matters worse for students.
Many Americans seek out college programs because college degrees are associated with a 68 percent average increase in wages, and STEM degrees in particular are known for being especially lucrative. Yet the graduation rate nationwide for STEM undergraduates is just 40 percent.
This is an issue nationwide, but in NYC it is exacerbated by how our severely underfunded public high schools often leave students woefully underprepared for CUNY colleges, which may impact their ability to meet them where they are. As a result, no matter how much they want to pursue a degree in STEM, our city’s students are often forced to turn away due to factors within the educational system outside of their control.
A transformative National Science Foundation grant that had just begun to support STEM equity at LaGuardia Community College was terminated last month without warning, caught in the crosshairs of sweeping federal budget cuts.
This grant represented a bold step forward in addressing the long-standing gaps in STEM education access and outcomes.
If we wish to reinstate innovation in STEM education for all students, we must act now.
America has been experiencing a STEM worker shortage in recent years – exacerbated by the global strain of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Many industries – especially in the private and government sectors – cannot find enough qualified workers to meet their growing demands, and America is falling behind on the global economic stage as a result.
Researchers have cited a number of contributing factors to this situation, but among the largest is, again, the underperformance of community colleges in STEM-related fields. The same thing that hinders students from obtaining economic mobility are also directly responsible for America’s faltering on the global stage. Clearly, something needs to be done about this issue.
In 2024, I won a grant from the National Science Foundation to address this problem over three academic years, from September 2024 to August 2027, using one of CUNY’s community colleges to investigate new approaches to learning models and training programs for STEM faculty. The goal was to better understand how we can assist city students following a STEM-based career track. The grant would assist thousands of CUNY students, and the findings would benefit many thousands more nationwide. More than 80 percent of CUNY students remain to work in New York, so this grant would also lessen the local burden of the STEM worker shortage.
Furthermore, if we design new approaches to understanding and innovating in the STEM classroom, we will retain more students in STEM and likely save money in the future by better understanding where to invest our resources. Taking all of this into account, this program was expected to bring massive benefits to individual students, the city of New York, and the entire United States.
On May 9, the grant was terminated.
The National Science Foundation has been among the most impacted agencies under the new federal budget, which slashes NSF’s STEM education funding by 75 percent from over $1 billion to just $288 million. This is less than half the inflation-adjusted value of NSF’s education budget in 1959. Multiple science policy organizations report a historic $5 billion drop in the NSF budget – the most severe contraction in its history.
These cuts imperil the U.S. scientific pipeline, especially at the community college level, where most students from underrepresented backgrounds begin their STEM journeys. Our grant, part of that national pipeline to cultivate tomorrow’s scientists, was one of many casualties of this reckless budget. It was designed to support inclusive teaching, student success and a more diverse STEM workforce. Instead, it was cut with no review – just collateral damage in a broader disinvestment in the nation’s future.
It’s not that there were any issues with the proposal itself – it had already undergone a rigorous, months-long review process by a highly critical panel and had to prove both its efficacy and its potential to benefit the community just to be considered. This grant was recognized as one that would meaningfully support our city, our country and our students. Its termination had nothing to do with doubts about its effectiveness. It was cut as an afterthought – discarded without serious review as part of a sweeping, indiscriminate budget reduction. As a result, all the benefits this program was poised to deliver, already planned and prepared have been brought to a screeching halt.
It’s not too late to reverse this decision. If you want CUNY community college researchers to continue studying how best to support students pursuing STEM careers, contact your representative in Congress and urge them to reinstate all canceled National Science Foundation grants and your city representative and ask them to fund the CUNY grants that were cut.
Reinstating this grant – and others that were canceled – remains possible if our local representatives in Washington and City Hall defend public funding for research. But it’s up to us, their constituents, to demand action and make sure they understand the damage being done to our students, our workforce and our nation’s standing as a global leader in STEM innovation.
Reem Jaafar, Ph.D. is a professor of mathematics at LaGuardia Community College
