Up First from NPR - The Class of 2025

Episode Date: May 25, 2025

A lot has changed in higher education since President Trump took office. This week on The Sunday Story, Ayesha reflects on her own college graduation, and she sits down with three graduating college seniors. They talk about how funding cuts have upended their postgrad plans and how the last semester has made them think differently about what college is all about.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

I'm Ayesha Roscoe and you're listening to The Sunday Story, where we go beyond the news to bring you one big story. A few weeks before graduating from Duke Kunshan University, Senior Liam Powell received a letter he'd been anticipating from the U.S. State Department. Dear William and Powell, thank you for your interest in an internship with the U.S. Department of State. Liam was a global health major and he'd interned at the United States Agency for International Development, or USAID. So when he saw there was an internship with the State Department, he applied and he was chosen. But then came a federal hiring freeze. We regret to inform you that the U.S. Department of State has canceled the summer 2025 cycle of the student internship program. In accordance with the President's executive order, entitled Hiring Freeze and the Office

of Management and Budget and Office of Personnel Management's Joint Memorandum, the department hereby rescinds your tentative offer to participate in the student internship program. We wish you success in your academic career. The email came to me March 14th this year, so pretty far down the line after the hiring freeze. A couple weeks ago, he walked across the stage at his graduation. As the Class of 2025 celebrate their achievements so far, many like Liam are grappling with the question of what next? And that's the way it is with graduations, right? No one knows what is to come.

Graduation season is to come. Graduation season, it's a celebration. It's a time of optimism. And you know, it makes me feel nostalgic for my own college graduation from Howard University. You know, you're thinking like of all the people who have come before you, and you are now a part of this long line of alumni. And so it's almost like you're being baptized into this new part of your life.

As a person, I was not ready to be on my own. I wasn't prepared or I didn't think I was prepared, but what I had learned in college, the seeds that were planted in me in college, they would bloom. And the woman that you see before you today or that you hear today, her voice was developed on that college campus. Now, I'm going someplace with this.

I've been thinking about that younger Aisha because I recently talked to some graduating seniors who are in that same place. At the same time, a lot has changed in higher education in the last several months. It seems like every time you turn on the news, there's a headline about how universities are being affected by the decisions

of the federal government. The Supreme Court recently cleared the way for the Trump administration to cancel roughly $65 million in federal education grants linked to diversity, equity, and inclusion. This morning, the Trump administration has revoked the visas of 18 students at FIU. Columbia University announced today it is laying off 180 staff members working on research

funded by federal grants after the Trump administration announced its intent to cut the university's funding. I wanted to hear about their fears and hopes for the future, So I sat down with them. My name is Liam Powell. Liam Powell, who we just heard, a recent graduate of Duke Kunshan University. I'm Alyssa Johnson. I am a senior at Purdue University studying wildlife. My name is Bobby McAlpine and I am the current sitting student body president at The Ohio State University.

I felt inspired by these students and their sense of clarity and purpose as they consider the world that they're about to head out into. And their determination and courage to find new paths for their lives. courage to find new paths for their lives. Our conversation after the break. This message comes from WISE, the app for doing things and other currencies.

With WISE, you can send, spend or receive money across borders, all at a fair exchange rate, no markups or hidden fees. Join millions of customers and visit wise.com. T's and C's apply. At Radiolab, we love nothing more than nerding out about science, neuroscience, chemistry. But, but, we do also like to get into other kinds of stories, stories about policing, or politics, country music, hockey, sex of bugs.

Regardless of whether we're looking at science or not science, we bring a rigorous curiosity to get you the answers. Hopefully, make you see the world anew. Radiolab, adventures on the edge of what we think we know. Wherever you get your podcasts. This is Ira Glass, the host of This American Life. So much is changing so rapidly right now with President Trump in office.

It feels good to pause for a moment sometimes and look around at what's what. To try and do that, we've been finding these incredible stories about right now that are funny and have feeling, and you get to see people everywhere making sense of this new America that we find ourselves in. This American Life, wherever you get your podcasts.

We're back with the Sunday story. When I sat down with Liam, Alyssa, and Bobby, I first wanted to get a sense of how all the changes happening on their campuses and in the country affected them personally. I have a question for everybody. Are you where you thought you would be six months ago? This has definitely not been the semester or like the graduation plans

that I thought it was going to be. So I thought I was going to go to graduate school to get a PhD, but everything that's been going on has kind of changed my life plans. In terms of my future, I was really expecting to be able to have some sort of referral or return offer at either of my last two internships that I've had. And both of those prospects have fallen through. But Bobby, who's the student body president at Ohio State, had a different kind of answer

to my question. Instead of talking about his own unclear future, he wanted to talk about his school. This last semester, quite frankly, has been one of the hardest. So, you know, I expected to graduate. It's an amazing time, a celebratory time. We're gonna dance, we're gonna laugh,

we're gonna do all the fun things. But when it comes to the work to get here, and as student body president, it has significantly grown the job to something that I never thought it would be. How would you describe morale on campus right now? A lot of people have asked me this question and I always struggle to answer it because you know on the one hand we are an amazing school, We just won a national championship for football. But on the other hand, students have come to me and just, they feel really scared.

I just think that people think that a lot of, or some of their government, people are making decisions in their name without actually consulting them. Do you have some students though who are happy with the changes they're seeing? There are people on all sides of the spectrum all the time. I mean, I delivered, I can't even count, probably over about 400 letters from conservative students. It was from liberal students, from black students, white students, to the governor of Ohio, asking him to veto a bill, Senate bill one that did pass.

And it's very unfortunate, but we'll continue to move forward. And what did that piece of legislation do? Yeah, Senate Bill 1, unfortunately, it gets rid of all offices of diversity and inclusion and all public university spaces within the state of Ohio. The only and sole reason why I am at The Ohio State University is because of our Office of Diversity and Inclusion. How did the DEI office keep you on track? When I lost my grandmother, when I lost a really good friend to mental health, that's where I was able to go to make sure that I not only stayed in college, but I was able to stay afloat. You know, you could just go in, talk to the folks, I called some of them my campus

aunties, campus uncles, and you really just feel at home. And they made you feel heard when quite frankly, some other parts of Columbus, some other parts of the university, when you didn't feel heard, they allowed you to be heard. I can imagine at a big state university, the importance of finding people in the staff and professors who care about you and connect with you, who make you feel like family and not just a number. And it sounds like for Bobby, that is what the DEI office did.

And I'm sure he wasn't alone in that. There was something else I wanted to know. How were they making sense of the funding cuts? And how were they making sense of the funding cuts and how were they adjusting to these curve balls that have now been thrown at them? Alyssa, you're having a hard time finding work in the wildlife space that you wanted to do your research on. Yeah.

So originally I was going to pursue a PhD in amphibian disease ecology. So I have been researching how contaminants affect amphibians and their disease dynamics for the past four years. So I was going to continue that work. At this time was when a lot of like the federal funding cuts towards academic institutions were going through and the funding cuts from the National Science Foundation were happening. And so graduate admissions across the whole entire country have gone to a very low point because universities and institutions and professors need to protect the people they already have. So they're not really letting

a lot of people in. Do you think it was your particular field of study that made it harder for you to get chosen or do you think it was just overall because of the funding cuts as you said they just had to pick less people? The research that I was doing there were some concerns about the funding source because it had both climate and diversity in the title. Yeah, it's related to like diversity of the species. Yeah, this is quite a strange thing that's going on with the National Science Foundation and

like DOGE, the Department of Government Efficiency, is that they're using either people who maybe don't have a lot of expertise towards reviewing these grants and understanding like the scientific terms behind them to screen through the names of grants for words like diversity, equity, climate change. And so with that throughout the whole entire country, regardless of whether you're qualified or not, you're seeing either offers going out and then being rescinded or, you know, everybody being put on some kind of wait list. And so that's kind of what ended up happening for me.

Well, Liam, you were an intern at USAID. What were you thinking as you were seeing the Trump administration essentially dismantling USAID? There's a feeling that's pretty selfish of just knowing that the career field that I've spent so long studying for in My undergrad is just going to be in such a weird state of flux and toss-up for such a long time I think that talking to a lot of professionals that work in the foreign aid and international development sector

There's a really common perspective that reform is absolutely necessary But that this isn't the way to do it. And that this is a decision that objectively leads to the loss of a lot of lives in a way that a lot of the American public is very insulated from and just completely unaware of. Bobby, you decided to push off law school for a year. Why did you decide to push it off? Well, honestly, being so inundated in the fight for higher education this past year has quite frankly put a chill down my spine.

I am really, really scared just to see the amount of attacks that are coming through with higher education in general. It's become a political football. These are the places that are supposed to be for opportunity, the places where people come to find themselves, the places where students and young people live, eat, breathe, and lead every single day. Higher education should not be a political football. I will stand at the top of the highest building and yell that with the biggest megaphone I can. Higher education should not be a political football, period.

I mean, do you still want to be a lawyer? What are you going to do? Right now I want to go into government relations and government affairs. I know hell of a time to do that, right? I do want to be a lawyer. I do. I want to go to law school, but there is so much in flux right now Why would I place myself in that extreme unknown?

Rather than wait a few years to try and see just how this is going to affect everything It's really a unique time to be considering a career connected to the government or public service. But I was surprised to hear that all three of these soon-to-be college graduates seem to be leaning towards some form of public service rather than a way. A lot of this work, like research, they have a lot of ties to the government. They're either government funded or a lot of people would go into the government. Is that something that you see in your future or that you can see in your future now? Doing research or going into government work for the federal government or what have you?

It's definitely not something for me that I've completely ruled out. But even if a new president comes along, there really isn't an easy way to magically rebuild the capacity that the US has built up with these international development programs over decades of work. So I think that it's more of delaying of what my goals look like and where I want to be. I would love to be a public servant if academia didn't work out for me. But I think the reality is that the shifts that are happening right now are making it incredibly difficult for that to happen and They're not going to recover for a very long time if not ever like Liam was saying It takes a lot of work. It takes a lot of time. It takes decades to get these institutions set up Usually once those things go private or if they're shut down, they don't come back.

So I wasn't very tapped into that until recently because I mean maybe this is ignorant of me but I just felt like I didn't have to. I felt like the funding was always going to be there. Honestly Alyssa, that is exactly what so many students are feeling. Where we get our funding as a university, especially coming from a public Alyssa, that is exactly what so many students are feeling. Where we get our funding as a university, especially coming from a public university like I am, it never really crossed students' minds. At the end of the day, it's forcing a lot of students to really look at how all of these

universities are funded, how can we make sure that they continue to be funded? There is some positive in it because it's forcing so many students to form our opinions and form how we want our government to work in the future. Yeah, I mean, you hear a lot of, I'm so overwhelmed right now. I feel so depressed. I feel so horrified by what's going on. I just don't know what to do. I'm just going to like delete Instagram. I'm just going to delete my news apps. And I feel like one thing that like I've been

trying to do and that I feel like a lot of, you know, like young people are starting to shift towards is like, this is so horrifying. And it is so scary. And it is so frustrating. And it makes me so angry. But I, I can't look away. Silence is not an option anymore. Exactly. It really isn't. I feel like a lot of the actions that are happening are sort of trying to isolate us and make us feel small, but that's really not the case because we're all going through such similar things and we have to work together for change and just like for, I don't

know, for something better than this to happen. You know, it feels like what I'm hearing you saying is that these interruptions to your future plans have actually made you more politically aware than you might have been otherwise. So I got to ask all of you, how are you feeling about the future? It sounds like you're saying that you're motivated. That's what it sounded like to me. Yeah, our generation is incredibly resilient.

We were young people through the COVID pandemic. We're now young adults during this extremely tumultuous time in the federal government. And still, I see people continuing to push. I really agree with you. I think that it has taught me a lot about resiliency in a way that I wasn't really expecting to have as a lesson in my college career. I just think that it's going to take me a few years longer than I expected to sort of realize my post-college dream, but I think that I'll get there eventually. Students are a determined people. Young people in general are a determined people. And I'm gonna just read a small part of my last speech as I go out of Ohio State.

Tonight we celebrate, we dance, we laugh, we reflect, but when we leave this place, let's carry this energy with us. Tonight, we celebrate, we dance, we laugh, we reflect. But when we leave this place, let's carry this energy with us. Let's organize, let's educate, let's pour into our communities, let's support one another, hold each other accountable, and never, ever let anyone tell us that our story does not matter. As we move forward, we have to know our stories and we have to know our history. Determined people remain and the determined people rise.

Class of 2025, this is not the end of the road. This is the start of a new chapter. Let it be bold, let it be brave, let it be worthy of the journey that it took to get here. We've been talking with college seniors, Bobby McAlpine, Alyssa Johnson, and Liam Powell. Congratulations to all of you. I'm wishing you all the best of luck. Thank you so much for speaking with us.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for giving us a platform for our voices. This episode of The Sunday Story was produced by Elena Torek and Janet Ujong Li. Additional production and editing by Justine Yan. The conversation was edited by Ed McNulty for Weekend Edition, mastering by Robert Rodriguez. The Sunday Story team includes Andrew Mambo and our senior supervising producer, Liana Simstrom.

Irene Noguchi is our executive producer. Up first is back tomorrow with all the news you need to start your week. Until then, have a great rest of your weekend and congratulations to the class of 2025. I'm Tanya Mosley, co-host of Fresh Air. At a time of sound bites and short attention spans, our show is all about the deep dive. We do long-form interviews with people behind the best in film, books, TV, music, and journalism. Here our guests open up about their process and their lives in ways you've never heard

before. Listen to the Fresh Air podcast from NPR and WHYY. With a major shift in our politics underway in this country, 1A is drilling down on what's at stake for you and our democracy. In our weekly series, if you can keep it, we put these changes into focus and answer your questions about the impact of the Trump administration on the US. Join us every Monday for if you can keep it on the one day podcast from NPR and WAMU. Great conversation makes for a great party. you.