Public and private universities will be required to disclose the names of their foreign donors, according to the Department of Education.
As it stands, the Higher Education Act requires universities to report gifts and contracts valued at $250,000 or more to the Education Department. However, department officials said that it is not being enforced.
“The law is very clear,” a department official told the Daily Signal, which first reported the change. “It says that the Department of Education has to make available for public inspection the reports submitted by the universities. We’re not doing that right now.”
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed the news in a post on X.
While universities currently report gifts and contractors — or counterparties — to the Department of Education, most foreign counterparties are not made public due to “relaxed enforcement” of the law.
The Biden administration transferred the HEA’s Section 117 responsibilities, which require the disclosure, to an office that “lacks the capacity to enforce the reporting requirements in a meaningful manner,” according to a letter written by Rep. James Comer (R-KY) and Virginia Foxx (R-NC).
“The Biden-Harris Administration turned a blind eye to colleges and universities’ legal obligations by deprioritizing oversight and allowing foreign gifts to pour onto American campuses,” said Secretary of Education Linda McMahon in a statement.
Since the start of his second term, President Donald Trump has emphasized increased transparency in foreign funding to U.S. universities. Last April, he launched investigations into the University of California, Berkeley, and Harvard University over their foreign funding reporting practices.
Earlier this year, the Department of Education announced a foreign funding reporting portal that allows the public to inspect “key features” of previously disclosed foreign funding.
China is the second biggest donor, having spent more than $6 billion on U.S. universities. Top universities such as Harvard, Cornell University, and Carnegie Mellon University are among the top recipients of foreign gifts. The portal, however, does not disclose the gifters’ identities.
In February, the Department of Education and the State Department established a partnership to enhance the transparency of foreign gifts received by American universities. Foreign funding “poses a national security risk,” said the State Department.
The State Department will use its “national security and foreign national academic admissions expertise to review and assess the industry’s compliance with the law, share data with the public and federal stakeholders, and identify potential threats,” according to the announcement fact sheet.
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The Department of Education is providing notice to universities and allowing for public comment on the new requirement, per the Daily Signal. The department plans to make the counterparty information available by early to mid-summer.
“We’ve made a lot of progress in a very short period of time,” the senior official said. “Universities know that we’re serious about this. We’re consistently telling them that this is very important. We’ve made it a lot easier, through the new reporting portal for them to provide these reports, and we’re going to make more information available on counterparties for the American people.”
