By Hawaii News HOKU Opinion Desk

Cue the tiny violins, braddah. The University of Hawaii is crying big tears over $73 million in federal grant cuts, and they want the entire state to feel sorry for them (Hensel, 2025). UH President Wendy Hensel says the loss of 76 federal grants is a “significant threat” to their research programs. Employees are impacted. Lawsuits are flying. Everybody stay in panic mode, yeah (Hensel, 2025)?

But let’s take a step back and really look at this.

UH, and plenty of other universities like them, have been surfing on a wave of taxpayer dollars for decades. Instead of paddling toward true innovation, they got comfy chasing grants, bloating bureaucracies, and hosting research projects that sometimes feel more about inflating academic egos than solving local problems (National Taxpayers Union Foundation, 2024).

Now that the federal spigot is shutting off, UH is acting like someone stole their plate lunch (Hensel, 2025).

Let’s get one thing straight. These cuts aren’t some war on science. They’re part of a national wake-up call to stop wasting tax dollars on projects that make no real-world impact (Office of Management and Budget, 2025). America is staring down a mountain of debt, and federal budgets are shifting toward things that actually serve the people who pay the taxes, not just the folks sitting in the ivory towers (Heritage Foundation, 2025).

This isn’t about the end of research. It’s about the end of easy money. UH has gotten way too used to swimming in federal dollars without doing the heavy lifting to diversify where the money comes from. Private sector partnerships? Small kine. Commercial spinoffs? Hardly see ’em (UH Annual Research Report, 2024). Local-driven projects funded by Hawaii businesses and communities? Eh, you tell me. Even UH’s own Board of Regents has flagged these cracks in their reports (UH BOR Meeting Minutes, 2024).

So maybe it’s time UH stops crying to the Attorney General’s office and starts walking into local businesses with proposals. Maybe they can learn something from all the small businesses and families in Hawaii that figured out how to survive without waiting for handouts.

This is UH’s chance to get lean, get local, and get innovative. Time to show some aloha for the grind, and stop leaning on federal crutches. Less pilikia, more hana hou. Less excuses, more doing. Less “woe is me,” more “how can we?”

Or what, still too hard to imagine life outside the campus gates?


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References

Hensel, W. (2025, May 15). University of Hawaii: Trump administration cuts surge to nearly $73 million. Hawaii News Now. https://www.hawaiinewsnow.com/2025/05/15/university-hawaii-trump-administration-cuts-surge-nearly-73-million/

Heritage Foundation. (2025). Federal budget priorities for a secure and sustainable future. Heritage Foundation.

National Taxpayers Union Foundation. (2024). Federal grant dependency and the university industrial complex.

Office of Management and Budget. (2025). Fiscal year 2026 budget proposal overview.

UH Annual Research Report. (2024). University of Hawaii system research funding overview 2024.

UH BOR Meeting Minutes. (2024). University of Hawaii Board of Regents Annual Budget and Audit Review Meeting Minutes.