VUMC starts forewarned hiring freeze and layoffs triggered by federal funding cuts

Cutbacks at Vanderbilt University Medical Center have started.

“In response to reductions in federal funding, VUMC is strategically reducing operating costs,” reads a statement. “Hiring for most research and administrative positions has been paused and some positions have been eliminated.”

This isn’t coming as a surprise, as warnings started in late March. Medical center CEO Jeff Balser informed his staff about the reductions in a video, saying the system will cut $250 million from the budget in the new fiscal year, which starts in July.

That’s because the Trump Administration is systematically getting rid of millions in medical research funding — canceling one-off grants because of political disapproval and reducing funding across the board for agencies like the National Institutes of Health.  

The university and its medical center have lost $8 million in grant cancellations because amid the administration’s crackdown on diversity, equity and inclusion, according to the Nashville Business Journal. One grant, totaling nearly $6 million, was helping the system recruit faculty from “racial groups historically excluded from science.” Another aimed to ensure the system had the infrastructure needed to diversify its research participants.

The Trump Administration pitched cutting NIH grant funding across the board by capping so-called “indirect costs,” which pay for things like electricity, building maintenance and IT. For projects at big research universities — like Vanderbilt University and the University of Tennessee — some of the money helps the overall school stay afloat.

Tennessee gets around $700 million a year in NIH funding — with most of the money going to Vanderbilt. The grants go to universities, hospitals and biomedical companies, and they directly support about 9,000 jobs statewide.

That proposal is tied up in the legal system, as universities and states across the country challenge the policy’s legality.