STURGE: 5 wasteful uses of taxpayer money in 2024 lawmakers should investigate in 2025
2025 is the time to put a stop to the wasteful spending that has plagued higher education. Here are five eye-opening examples of higher education using Americans tax dollars to push DEI far-left ideologies in research.
2025 is the time to put a stop to the wasteful spending that has plagued higher education for far too long.
The incoming Trump administration’s anticipated Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and Congress can investigate questionable expenditures to cut back waste and fraud in higher education.
Here are five eye-opening examples of higher education using Americans tax dollars to push Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity (DEI) and far-left ideologies in research:
1. CUNY gets $19 million from taxpayer-funded NIH for health ‘equity center’
The City University of New York (CUNY) operates a $19.3 million “Minority Health, Equity and Social Justice” center with funds from the National Institutes of Health.
The funds aim to reduce “racial and ethnic health disparities” and to get more minorities involved in biomedical research.
2. GOP Sen. Cassidy calls for investigation into taxpayer dollars funding DEI
The University of Michigan and the University of Virginia spend $50 million in federal grant funding toward DEI and employ over 200 DEI staff, while other universities average only 45.
Senator Bill Cassidy (R-La.) is calling for an investigation into this taxpayer-funded DEI bonanza.
Two researchers at Boise State University in Idaho are studying “white supremacist extremism” with a $50,000 grant from the National Science Foundation.
In response to a Campus Reform request for comment, a National Science Foundation official justified the project’s funding by claiming that the study has “intellectual merit.”
The U.S. Department of Education allocates more than $40 million in federal grants to improve college completion rates for “underserved students.”
The department’s Postsecondary Student Success Grant program uses funding to “improve postsecondary student outcomes, including retention, transfer, credit accumulation, and completion, by leveraging data and implementing, scaling, and rigorously evaluating evidence-based approaches.”
5. NASA hands out more than $7 million to boost ‘diversity’
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has spent over $7 million dollars in taxpayer funded grants to boost “diversity.”
NASA allocates grant money to universities to “grow initiatives in engineering-related disciplines and fields for learners who have historically been underrepresented and underserved in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields.”
In response to a Campus Reform request for comment, a National Science Foundation official justified the project’s funding by claiming that the study has “intellectual merit.”
