President Trump's proposed budget includes dramatic cuts to federal research funding that would deeply affect academic institutions.

If approved by Congress, Trump's budget would cut $6 billion from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) -- about 20 percent of its funding.

"I think it's incredibly shortsighted," said Susan Blanchard, Vice President for research at Tufts Medical Center, which receives more than half of its annual budget from the NIH.

Blanchard says Trump's blueprint is bad news for medical research and the economy.

"The NIH actually is a massive economic engine across the nation... and I would hope that the administration would carefully consider what the long term consequences of what such a sudden and drastic cut to the NIH budget would do to our nation’s biomedical community," she said.

Trump's proposed budget would also zero out funding for the National Endowments of the Arts and the Humanities, both of which give millions of dollars to colleges and universities.

In a statement released Thursday, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos said the President's budget "eliminate[s] hundreds of redundant, overlapping or ineffective programs... while streamlining and simplifying funding for college and continuing to help make college education more affordable."

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