Comment by jltsiren
6 days ago
Universities don't sell or do research. They provide facilities, equipment, services, and sometimes funding for research. The actual research is done by individuals, who are nominally employed by the university but largely independent from it. If a researcher doesn't like a particular university, they can usually take their funding and projects to another university.
When grants are revoked for political reasons, it affects individuals who happen to be affiliated with the university more than the university itself. And it particularly affects people doing STEM research, because humanities and social sciences receive much less external funding. If the decline in public funding is permanent, it makes humanities and social sciences relatively stronger within the university. They are more viable without public subsidies than the more expensive STEM fields.
Research is often (usually?) the property of the host university, though. Yeah labs are independently managed but the university is in at least one sense, and imo many more, still the institution both doing and selling the work
By default, research belongs to the researchers. That's an essential part of academic freedom. The main exceptions are research funded by grants and contracts that specify otherwise, and when you start looking for patents and other commercialization opportunities.
In other words, the university may have some property rights to your work if you deal too closely with for-profit businesses or national security interests. But if you are just doing normal research with normal grants, you'll probably never see those exceptions in your career.