From Inside Higher Ed: The halfway point of the federal fiscal year looms at month’s end, yet the National Institutes of Health has only obligated around 15 percent of the estimated $38 billion it has to distribute in grants and contracts to universities and other research institutions, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges. The AAMC [last] Tuesday released an analysis of data from NIH’s RePORTER site, showing it had only obligated $5.8 billion as of [the previous] Friday, compared to nearly $9 billion by that date in the final full fiscal year of the Biden administration. When the NIH “obligates” funding, it has sent an institution a notice saying the dollars are available to its researchers to spend...
The report says that current funding rates “raise concerns” that the NIH could be in a similar situation to last year, when it was forced to accelerate its spending to obligate the full amount of its budget by Sept. 30, the end of the fiscal year. According to the AAMC, last year the NIH obligated over half of the necessary research funds to institutions in the final three months of the fiscal year, July to September. Many of the grants were obligated through controversial multiyear funding of individual grants that reduced the number of new grants it distributed over all.
The agency’s own data also suggest that the careers of early-career researchers were particularly harmed by fewer grant awards last year...
Full story at https://www.insidehighered.com/news/government/science-research-policy/2026/03/25/aamc-nih-has-only-obligated-15-external-research.
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