> With a nation this far endebted you'd think people might think it reasonable to question billions in grants..

One might also question the wisdom of starting yet another ongoing war, or throwing piles of money at putting a president's name everywhere it wasn't asked for, or truckloads of money "renovating" national monuments only to have to throw more money at re-doing the job because it was half-assed by an unqualified crew, or literal tens of billions at ICE (kinda sorta) doing their job worse than ever before... Guess how much money's been wasted on all that?

We may disagree on what spendings are necessary but I get your frustration. Spending should be questioned everywhere and I don't mind it starting in academia... It's not like it couldn't be parallelized to other areas