Wednesday, April 9, 2025
It might be premature to sound the alarm, but here goes. The
executive order that is intended to transform government spending will likely have a significant impact on meetings in the scientific, healthcare and academia sectors. The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) cost efficiency initiative executive order includes a section for “Non-Essential Travel Justification”. Here’s the key clause:
“The Agency Head shall prohibit agency employees from engaging in federally funded travel for conferences or other non-essential purposes unless the travel-approving official has submitted a brief, written justification for the federally funded travel within such system.”
R1 Universities
Recently, the American Council of Education and the Carnegie Foundation published the
2025 Research Activity Designation. The designation that matters most is Research 1 (R1) institutions. These universities receive at least $50M in research spending. In 2025, there are 187 R1 universities. That’s up from 146 R1 institutions in the previous release.
We’ve analyzed the audience of dozens of large meetings with significant attendance from colleges and universities. Many of these meetings will have over 50% of their attendees (including graduate students) from R1 universities.
The Primary Threat
While it appears that federal research funding will continue, the target of DOGE seems to be the
capping of indirect costs included in a grant to 15%. It seems to be a good argument because the 15% cap is a common practice of private foundations like Gates or Rockefeller. But many R1 universities negotiate the indirect expenses to be much higher 25% or more of the grant funding. That means R1 universities are getting a really big haircut that will have trickle down effects on travel to conferences and even association memberships. The fact that the number of R1 Institutions have increased from 146 to 187 is another data point that certainly would get the attention of any audit.
Case and point, the Associated Press recently
published a story on how this may impact Duke University. Duke’s current “indirect costs” rate is 61% (cancer and neurology research facilities and lab equipment are pretty costly). Last year, Duke received $580M in NIH grants and contracts. With the new cap on indirect costs, my back of the envelope calculation estimates that Duke could receive about $265M less in funding/year.
Business travel and professional development are usually prime areas for cutting non-essential expenses. The impact probably won’t be as prevalent in the first two quarters of 2025, but will likely have a greater impact on attendance and financial performance of meetings thereafter.
This could hit our industry fast and hard. As outlined in the closing paragraph of the Forbes article referenced below, “It takes relatively little time to tear down the academic science enterprise, a system that’s been key to the country’s decades-long leadership in science, medicine, technology and business innovation. But it will take much longer to build that enterprise back, putting the nation at risk for economic decline, weakened security, impaired health, and a poorer quality of life.”
On the Web: To understand more about how major universities like Cornell and Stanford are reacting to expected funding cuts read the Forbes article
More Universities Slow Spending, Admissions Over Federal Funding Chaos at
https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaeltnietzel/2025/03/03/more-universities-cut-budgets-admissions-due-to-federal-funding-chaos/Early Indicators
The stock market and meetings don’t like uncertainty. If and when there is a measurable impact from this executive order from meetings with high government or academic attendance, some of the early indicators to monitor include:
- Last minute cancellations from both registrants and speakers
- Decline in abstract submissions
- Lower member renewal from Academia professionals and students
- Resignations from committee or task forces
Adapted from Dave’s Forward Thinking column in PCMA’s Convene. Reprinted with permission of Convene
, the magazine of the Professional Convention Management Association. ©2025.