Eight months after Penn reduced graduate admissions, programs report varying impacts

Eight months after Penn instructed schools to reduce graduate admissions in response to federal funding cuts, department chairs and academic staff told The Daily Pennsylvanian that their students, faculty, and programs have experienced varied effects across the University.

The initial cuts in February drew widespread criticism from Penn students and faculty, who expressed concern for the University’s research projects and academic mission. Two months into the academic year, graduate chairs and program directors warned that the cuts may have lasting effects on course quality and the availability of teaching assistants.

Several schools made notable cuts — including a 35% decrease in the Perelman School of Medicine’s fall 2025 Ph.D. cohort and a 33% decrease in the School of Arts and Sciences’ graduate cohort. According to faculty at the time the reductions were made, several SAS departments were forced to rescind acceptances.

The February move came in response to a proposed 15% cap on indirect costs from the National Institutes of Health, which could have cost Penn around $240 million. The University filed a lawsuit against the proposal soon after, and the order was permanently blocked by a Massachusetts district judge in April.

A letter from then-Interim SAS Dean Jeffrey Kallberg directly attributed the decision to reduce admissions to the NIH action, which he alleged would have an “immediate and broad impact” on University finances. 

The impacts of the cuts have differed across the University, reflecting the varied responses of Penn’s graduate schools. Multiple faculty members spoke to the consequences of the cuts on the availability and quality of TAs for undergraduate courses.

Serving as a TA is a “big” responsibility for graduate students, and departments are “very shorthanded” as a result of the program reductions, according to Political Science professor and former graduate program director Alex Weisiger. 

Medical School professor Kim Sharp — who serves as chair of the Graduate Group in Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics — similarly noted the impacts of smaller class sizes on TA roles in an interview with the DP. However, Sharp noted that the organizational structure of most graduate programs will postpone the tangible effects of the cuts.

“Students don’t TA in their first two years,” he said. “The fact that we have a smaller class size obviously won’t have any impact on the availability of TAs until a year and a half from now.”

Sharp added that if TA shortages arise in the future, faculty members are likely to “restructure where those courses are run or evaluated and graded.”

“It’s nice to have TAs, but I’d be very surprised if any faculty member … would not offer a course that they thought was academically important just because there wasn’t a TA,” Sharp said.

According to Weisiger, an alternative option is to “hire people from outside” to serve as TAs in place of graduate students. The Political Science department has previously employed students from the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School to assist undergraduate classes — a practice that Weisiger expressed concerns about.

“Some of those people are great,” Weisiger said. “On average, they’re okay to bad, and some of them are really bad. If you just end up with somebody who’s just not as qualified to perform this role … it creates all sorts of headaches.”

According to Michael Grant — the executive director of communications at the Stuart Weitzman School of Design — the school has “not made cuts to course offerings or TAs based on Ph.D. student enrollment.” 

Weisiger and Sharp also noted that previous financial shortages and challenges at the University have impacted their programs in the past.

When Weisiger began coordinating graduate studies in 2018, he said that Penn reduced “the size of the incoming cohorts for all programs, except for the smallest in [the School of] Arts and Sciences.”

“What that means is we have a very large fourth-year cohort right now, and then smaller third- and second-year cohorts,” Weisiger added. “Last year was going to be the year where we kind of got back to being able to bring in a typical number of students. And instead, we were forced to admit fewer again.”

Weisiger said he was “not surprised” by the February decision to reduce admitted class sizes, adding that “graduate students are expensive and have gotten more expensive over time.”

The Medical School also planned to reduce admissions before the February cuts, Sharp said, adding that this “primed” most departments for the eventual changes.

Faculty members emphasized that the admissions cuts and ongoing federal uncertainty have impacted current and prospective students’ experiences in graduate programs.

English professor Paul Saint-Amour — who served as the graduate chair of the English department when the cuts were announced — told the DP that 1968 Wharton graduate and President Donald Trump’s immigration policy may disincentivize international students from applying to graduate programs.  

“The cuts are added to the new difficulties and uncertainties that have been imposed on international students by the federal government’s policy changes forward toward student visas,” Saint-Amour said. “Those compound one another.”

While acknowledging the difficulty of the decision, SAS Dean Mark Trodden previously told the DP that Penn “had no choice but to do what we did.” He recommended that future and prospective students “not to get hung up on last year and decisions that had to be made very quickly in a very rapidly moving environment.”

In a statement to the DP, Graduate Chair of Philosophy Jennifer Morton similarly touched on how students have felt since the changes — despite the fact that she “[hasn’t] received word on what the admissions cycle will look like next year.”

“All I can say is that last year’s cut was demoralizing to our graduate student community, but we have made do with a smaller class and hope that this year we will do better,” Morton wrote. 

Saint-Amour added that the reductions may have “extreme” impacts on smaller programs. The decision to “make cuts after admissions offers have gone out” could create “reputational harms” for the University and its programs, according to Saint-Amour.

“The cumulative effect of [the cuts] is pretty large, and it’s partly to do with the program, but it’s also partly to do just with morale,” Saint-Amour said.

In an Oct. 2 interview with the DP, Provost John Jackson Jr. attributed the different graduate cohort sizes between programs to each school within the University doing their “own assessment” of how many Ph.D. students to accept.

Jackson emphasized that “Ph.D. education is vital,” adding that schools need to determine how many students they can accept while maintaining a standard of education that effectively trains students to do the work they pursue later.

Penn’s Executive Vice President Mark Dingfield also told the DP that the University has prioritized each school’s ability to make “local determinations about graduate student admissions.” He highlighted Penn’s efforts to be “as clear with the schools about what we think the financial conditions over the next five to 10 years may be.”

“Beyond just being clear with them about how we think about the sources of support from especially the federal government, we’re not giving them very specific direction,” Dingfield said. 

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