While one of the nation’s most prestigious universities battles the federal government over funding cuts, other Boston-area universities and colleges have begun to reassess their real estate plans.
Greater Boston has one of the highest concentrations of academic institutions in the country, and its schools have raked in billions in federal dollars and catapulted economic development across the state. With cuts in funding for National Institutes of Health research grants and other federal sources, some of these institutions have begun to slow their real estate expansions.
Officials from UMass Boston, Boston University and Northeastern University who spoke at Bisnow‘s Higher Education & Campus Development event Wednesday said they are doing everything they can to keep projects moving forward while also protecting their bottom line as federal funding dries up.
Boston University is one of the schools where officials say they are bracing for the impact of federal cuts.
“We are definitely slowing down on decisions and making sure that we are ready for winter,” UMass Boston Director of Campus Planning & Sustainability Dennis Swinford said at the event, held at the Boston Marriott Long Wharf Hotel.
“We’re going into winter, and we’ll be out eventually, but right now we’re being careful and taking a little bit more of a look at what resources we have.”
The university’s project pipeline includes plans to seek developers for its historic Calf Pasture Pump Station and the 10 acres that surround it. The larger UMass school network hosts over 70,000 students across its four main campuses in Boston, Lowell, Dartmouth and Amherst. The school is also the state’s third-largest employer, according to its website.
“We’re doing our best job to continue articulating what we bring to the Commonwealth,” Swinford said. “It’s our people here in this state, valuing higher education, understanding that education is one of the largest — if not the largest driver — in the region and supporting it at a public level.”
The school system’s other campuses are feeling the pressure as well. In 2024, UMass Chan Medical School in Worcester opened a new 350K SF research building. At the time, the medical school was one of the fastest-growing research campuses and the only public medical school in the state.
To build the property, the school borrowed $350M, a loan the school’s president said relies on the research done in the building to pay back, MassLive reported. Due to the National Institutes of Health’s cap on indirect funding, the school system could see a loss of $60M.
Bisnow/Taylor Driscoll
Perkins & Will’s Gautam Sundaram, Boston University’s Lindsay Newall, University of Massachusetts Boston’s Dennis Swinford and Nixon Peabody’s Jennifer Schultz
Last month, the school also rescinded dozens of graduate student offers due to funding uncertainty.
“It is a very uncertain time for all of higher education, whether you’re private or public,” Marty Meehan, president of the UMass System, told MassLive last month.
Massachusetts universities and colleges rely on nearly $4B in federal contracts and grants, the Boston Business Journal reported: roughly $1.7B for MIT, $649M for Harvard University, $359M for Boston University and $230M for Northeastern University.
“The financial landscape right now is challenging, to say the least,” said Maureen Hickey, assistant vice president of development initiatives at Northeastern. “Every dollar we put in, we have to know that it’s well spent, and we think really carefully about what the impact is going to be.”
Bisnow/Taylor Driscoll
UMass Amherst’s Douglas Marshall, UMass Lowell’s Leanne Peters, SGA’s John Sullivan, Brightcore Energy’s Jonathan Hernandez, Northeastern University’s Maureen Hickey and Berkeley Building Co.’s Richard Lampman
Lindsay Newall, associate vice president of real estate at Boston University, emphasized the importance of campus planning in a time like this. She said that — at least for the time being — the school is still moving forward with the initiatives of its two-year institutional master plan.
The plan focuses on the university’s Charles River Campus in Allston and Brighton and is prioritizing the modernization of student housing and other campus buildings. The projects include renovating Warren Towers, BU’s largest on-campus undergraduate student housing facility, construction of the Pardee School of Global Studies and the renovation of the Mugar Memorial Library.
However, the institution is addressing potential pressures from federal policies, including the ongoing trade war.
“We’re turning inward a little bit,” Newall said. “The senior vice president of operations and the treasurer are taking some time to meet with teams individually and explain what the implications are of tariffs and explain what the direct impacts might be on our fiscal ’26 budget.”
Newall also added that although there have been pressures and conversations about the economic impacts of federal policies, the school’s $3.5B endowment will not be a crutch for these capital improvement projects.
“The reserves are not for wishing and dreaming,” Newall said. “They’re a critical part of the plans that we have made. It’s not a cushion for this sort of event.”
Bisnow/Taylor Driscoll
UMass Building Authority’s Barbara Kroncke, Lee Kennedy Co.’s Lee Kennedy, Tufts University’s Karen Cutone and Neoscape’s Bryan Holmes.
Due to the threat of a federal funding freeze, many universities across the country have reined in their spending and halted commercial real estate projects that were set to begin or were in progress.
Massachusetts universities have begun to borrow cash to pay for facilities and shore up funds. Harvard plans to borrow roughly $750M from Wall Street, CNBC reported. Across the country, municipal bond sales for these institutions are up 40%, Bloomberg reported.
Harvard has been in an ongoing battle with the Trump administration after the federal government decided to review its $9B in federal funding amid claims of antisemitism and leftist ideology.
The university filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration on April 21 after a government task force announced it would cut $2B in funding. Last month, the university’s School of Public Health exited two leases outside of its core campus and executed its first round of layoffs.
Harvard Chief of University Planning and Design Purnima Kapur spoke on Wednesday’s event about its campus expansion projects, sustainability goals and historic preservation but didn’t speak about the federal funding issue and declined to comment to Bisnow about it.
Bisnow/Taylor Driscoll
Harvard University’s Purnima Kapur and Leggat McCall’s Mahmood Malihi
Not only are federal spending cuts impacting the planning at these institutions, but they also face threats to their international student base due to the Trump administration’s immigration policies. The administration has revoked visas from students across the Commonwealth, including 17 students from Harvard, UMass Boston and UMass Amherst at the beginning of April. And a Tufts University student was detained by undercover ICE operatives last month.
Hickey said this has had a significant impact on how they plan for the future of the campus.
Northeastern has roughly 20,000 international students from over 147 countries, according to its website, one of the largest international student communities in the country.
The Trump administration’s actions are expected to depress international enrollment in universities that are already facing slowed domestic enrollment due to demographic changes. Higher education enrollment declined 15% from 2010 to 2021, and declining birthrates in the early 2010s have experts forecasting sharper drops in the coming years.
“The major trends impacting development and design on our campus are fed by the major trends that are impacting higher education,” Hickey said. “That’s a change in enrollment — the demographic changes that we’re all aware of for domestic students, but also more recent expected changes for international students based on policies.”
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