It’s been a decade since I last wrote a non-scientific, free-flowing essay (though I’ve been jotting down thoughts all along). I didn’t realize how much I missed it until I sat down at 6 AM to finally shape this one from my notes. Disclaimer: Before people ask, this is a general trend that I am observing across many places in academia not just Northeastern.
In the past few decades, computer science has thrived on a delicate balance: industry drives application, academia explores possibility. But something is shifting. And I am not sure it is for the better.
U.S. universities, longstanding engines of foundational innovation, are under growing pressure. Public funding for research is shrinking. The current administration, for instance, has proposed sweeping cuts to agencies that sustain early-stage, curiosity-driven work. The National Science Foundation’s 2025 budget proposal includes a 57% cut overall, with a 65% drop in fellowships and complete elimination of several STEM education programs. NIH and NASA science programs face similar reductions. These aren’t just budget line items. They’re signals about what kind of future we are, or aren’t, investing in.
At the same time, universities are becoming increasingly corporatized. Branding strategies, performance dashboards, and marketable degree portfolios have started to replace open-ended inquiry. Faculty, once the primary drivers of institutional direction, now often find themselves chasing KPIs set by people far removed from the intellectual core. Strategic visions are handed down. Decisions about hiring, research priorities, or even curriculum design are increasingly made in service of visibility, rankings, or revenue goals.
This erosion of faculty agency is not just a management issue. It undermines the very conditions under which academic research thrives. When those closest to the work, those who actually teach, publish, mentor, and build, are no longer empowered to shape it, something essential is lost. Faculty begin to disengage. Not out of apathy, but because the trust that sustained their vocation has been quietly withdrawn.
And here’s the deeper concern: this shift doesn’t just affect universities. It affects all of us, the country, and the world.
The next 20 years will present problems (atleast those close to my heart) that don’t have obvious commercial solutions: AI governance, cyber-physical system security, post-quantum cryptography, and the growing intersection of technology and democratic institutions. These are problems that require slow, careful, foundational work. The kind that rarely fits neatly into a product cycle or a profit model.
Corporate research labs do impressive work, no question. But they are shaped by strategic incentives. Much of their output depends on prior advances made in “non-profit” settings such as universities, government labs, and public research consortia. When those institutions lose their ability to think independently, we don’t just lose knowledge. We lose foresight.
What makes academia unique is not just the freedom to explore, but that it’s built to support research that doesn’t need immediate justification. For example, a decade-long inquiry into a mathematical structure, or a systems prototype with no clear user base yet.
And when academic governance works well, it’s because faculty are given the authority to lead, not just the obligation to execute. The most resilient environments, whether academic or corporate, tend to be those where ideas are allowed to grow from the ground up. The moment everything becomes top-down, the people doing the real work start to disconnect. It’s not a failure of commitment. It’s a failure of design.
This isn’t meant to defend any specific university, model, or funding source—just to express something that’s been on my mind for a while. It’s a quiet concern. A reminder that we are steadily hollowing out one of the few spaces in modern society designed to think for the long term. We don’t know exactly what the consequences of that will be. But they won’t show up next quarter. They’ll show up in the next crisis, or the one after that.
If academia no longer protects the freedom to think independently, slowly, deeply, sometimes inefficiently, what will be left of it?