Taking office in January, the Trump administration has moved to reshape higher education,

cutting off funding, and issuing a series of executive orders, targeting diversity programs,

transgender rights, and how universities handle investigations into anti-Semitism.

While some schools have reached settlements with the administration, others are navigating the academic year squarely in the federal government's crosshairs, including the University of California, Los Angeles, where Stephanie Sye reports for our series, Rethinking College.

Students can work in any department within the UCLA system. During the first days of the fall quarter, undergraduates,

including many freshmen, get advice on applying

to join one of the hundreds of research labs

at the University of California, Los Angeles.

When you reach out to faculty,

CC their grad students and their lab managers.

Amy Thann is a PhD student and mentor with the undergraduate research center at UCLA.

You can see from the students that leave these talks, they're so enthusiastic.

It's like everything's in flux, I think.

That's the vibe.

In flux.

The Trump administration's freezing of nearly $600 million in federal grants has cast a

cloud of uncertainty over one of the nation's most prestigious public research universities.

The penalty for what the administration says was a hostile environment for Jewish and Israeli

students was announced over the summer.

Some of these schools are getting billions and billions of dollars and they misbehave, so

that's it.

So one way the other, we're going to win that whole thing.

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