It's the time of year when prospective students usually apply to graduate programs at research universities in Washington. But there could be fewer spots available this cycle due to continued uncertainty around funding.
Emily Levesque is an astronomy professor at the University of Washington. Earlier this fall, she helped conduct a survey for the American Astronomical Society that found dozens of astronomy degree programs across the nation are shrinking or cancelling their graduate admissions this year.
That includes her department, which isn’t accepting any graduate students for the 2026-27 school year.
“We knew that the federal funding uncertainty made it very hard to make long-term promises about how many grants we would have,” Levesque said.
Levesque said it's the first time the program has suspended admissions in her 10 years of teaching at UW.
She said STEM doctoral students are critical for research operations on campus, and worries funding uncertainty will hurt the next generation of scientists.
“They often go on to do really exciting, innovative private sector work,” Levesque said. “It is sometimes forgotten that that is similarly a drain of resources and a drain of experts.”
Levesque’s astronomy program is not alone. UW spokesperson David Rey said other masters and Ph.D. programs on campus also decided to suspend admissions this year.
“The instability of the federal funding environment informed some of these decisions,” Rey wrote in an email. “The programs make these decisions on their own, based on their own situations and there is no concerted action to suspend admissions across UW graduate programs.”
Meanwhile, at Washington State University, additional financial pressures — including low undergraduate enrollment over the past few years — are impacting the number of graduate students faculty can take on.
Each year, faculty consider resources like federal grants and teaching assistant positions when they decide how many doctoral students to send admissions offers to, said Brian Saam, the chair of WSU’s Physics and Astronomy Department.
“As undergraduate enrollment changes, oftentimes our TA needs change,” Saam said, referring to teaching assistants.
In recent years, Ph.D. enrollment across WSU has modestly declined, according to spokesperson David Wasson. In the fall of 2023, there were 1,894 applicants; 456 were offered admission and 229 enrolled. By the fall of 2025, the applicants numbered 2,434. The university offered 362 students admission and 201 enrolled. Overall, there were about 120 fewer PhD students on campus from the fall of 2023 to 2025.
For Saam’s department, the problem over the past few years has been fewer teaching assistant positions to offer incoming graduate students.
“Graduate students are at the very, very heart of productivity for a department like ours,” Saam said.
Not only do the graduate students help out in classrooms, but they also conduct research that helps further renewable energy and modern electronics, he said.
Saam is hopeful that as WSU’s undergraduate enrollment stabilizes, his team will have more teaching assistant positions to offer when they begin to make admissions decisions in January.
But he worries uncertain federal funding could mean another small cohort.
“Graduate students do most of the important work for experimental scientists in astronomy,” Saam said. If they're not doing that research, there will be fewer results. "The pitch that you make to get that next round of grant funding isn't going to be as strong.”
