As the American Chemical Society (ACS) celebrates its 150th birthday, Chemistry World caught up with Wayne Jones, who chairs the organisation’s board of directors and serves as director-at-large, at the society’s autumn meeting in Chicago. An inorganic chemist who recently retired from his position as provost and vice president for academic affairs at the University of New Hampshire, Jones discussed the current situation facing US universities and their chemistry departments.
How are US research universities doing?
Proposed cuts to federal science agencies will reduce the amount of funds available to do research. And federal investment in scientific research has been one of the key drivers for US innovation – it makes a difference for economic growth and our global competitiveness. When those dollars decrease or become uncertain, research can be disrupted and the pipeline of chemistry students entering the workforce can come under pressure.
Many of our top universities have had to restrict the number of new graduate student positions they offer
Sadly, we have seen situations where scientists that are doing great work at US universities and companies leave because they don’t see a sustainable future for research. The real challenge is the uncertainty, because research programmes need to be scheduled over multiple years, and if the funding is uncertain then it is hard to accept a PhD student in year one if you don’t know that you are going to have funding for them for year four.
Can graduating students still find jobs?
We’ve seen that students who are graduating are having more difficulty landing a job in a timely manner. In some cases, students are accepting positions that are different than they had hoped.
Another challenge, and this also has to do with the current uncertainty, is that many of our top universities have had to restrict the number of new graduate student positions they offer. So, students in the pipeline – juniors and seniors about to get their bachelor’s degree – who in the past would have been a shoo-in to get into a graduate programme are now not finding that position and many are having to take a different path.
In a recent conversation with chemistry faculty at a dozen universities, every single one of them discussed how much their graduate pool has shrunk. None of them reported zero decrease.
What is the ACS doing to help?
ACS has a portfolio of scholarship programmes, the newest of which is the Catalyst Scholarship for undergraduate students pursuing chemistry or chemistry-related fields and directly supports students in financial need. Later this year, applications for the second cycle will open. We doubled these awards from $5000 (£3800) per student last year to $10,000.
The ACS Graduate Student Success Grants, which we initiated last year that committed up to $2.5 million to support master’s and PhD chemistry students in their final year of study whose work was disrupted when their adviser’s grants were suddenly cancelled, disbursed $1.4 million and helped 74 students. That programme will continue – we have approved another $1 million for up to 40 of these awards in 2026, and the submission deadline is 2 October 2026. There haven’t been as many ongoing research grants cancelled this year but funds coming out of the federal government have slowed down dramatically, which might not have been anticipated.
We also have a legislative network called Act4Chemistry through which our members can become involved in advocacy at the federal level. More than 4200 letters have been submitted by ACS members so far this year through this programme that address various requests for information and policy proposals. More than 900 of those were just in response to the White House Office of Management and Budget’s proposed rule, which would give political appointees greater control over federal research funding decisions. (Editor’s note: The proposal was supposed to go into effect on 1 October, but earlier this month Congress blocked its implementation through 11 December 2026.)
How can the ideal of open scientific communication be balanced with other realities?
A key part of the ACS’s core mission has always been to share scientific research, and publications is one way that we do that. Our founding fathers – they were all men – could never have imagined a million downloads a day from ACS publications, but that’s where we are now. There is a cost associated with that, and we are currently undergoing a model shift in who covers that expense.
This push toward open access, as defined by the federal government and by other agencies, is causing us to rethink how we should pay for the cost of publishing. Whether it was a printer printing pages, or an editor reviewing papers for quality assurance, there has always been a cost for publishing research.
No one group should be stuck covering publishing costs. In the past, these were paid through library subscriptions but now things are different and we must think about how these expenses fit into the budget of a researcher, library or manager. And as we look forward, I think we will see more comprehensive types of agreements that are going to spread out that load. But it is a time of change, and I don’t know how it is going to work out.
Are chemistry departments in the US at risk?
Chemistry education today in the US is robust, strong and healthy, but it hasn’t changed much in the last several decades. Our graduate students need more experience working in industrial collaborations and interdisciplinary teams. They also need more opportunities for professional development and writing, and AI experiences will be increasingly important.
Universities in the US are funded differently than in the UK, where the support is more centralised. Those in the US have support that comes from the education mission and the undergraduate courses taught, as well as from federal grants and a lot more philanthropy. That diversity of revenue streams creates a little bit of a buffer, but with the changes in enrollment demographics and the uncertainty from the federal government right now, universities are coming under significant financial pressure.
There will be impacts, and higher education institutions are going to have to rethink some of their financial models and the incentives for their chemistry departments to maintain their graduate programmes.
This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
