An Education Department investigation unearthed $1 billion in anonymous foreign funding on campuses nationwide and discovered a school with direct contracts with the Chinese Communist Party, leading to reforms instituted Monday.
The broad, yearlong inquiry into foreign funding on campus was launched in 2019, and since July of last year, U.S. colleges and universities have reported $6.5 billion in previously undisclosed foreign gifts and contracts, according to a press release which added that institutions have “anonymized” the identities of the donors of at least $1.14 billion in foreign funds flowing in from China, Russia, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia.
The Education Department, which has not yet completed the nationwide investigation, unveiled an online portal on Monday “that will make it easier for schools to report foreign gifts and contracts” above $250,000 as required by Section 117 of the Higher Education Act. The government believes that “it is not receiving sufficient information to determine compliance” with that law.
“Colleges and universities owe it to all of us to be transparent about their foreign financial ties,” Education Secretary Betsy DeVos said. “Transparency and accountability help protect academic freedom and our country’s national security and economic future. Today, we are making it even easier for colleges and universities to follow the law and provide the transparency Americans deserve.”
The new online portal requires institutions of higher education to provide more information about their foreign financial ties, and now, they must answer specific questions about each reportable transaction involving a foreign source, including disclosing whether the foreign source is a foreign government, a foreign legal entity, a foreigner, or someone acting as a foreign agent.
Last month, the Education Department told House Republicans it was concerned about the threat posed by the Chinese government and that its inquiry triggered “catch-up” reporting of more than $6.5 billion in previously undisclosed foreign funds “primarily” from Chinese and Middle Eastern sources on campuses nationwide.
The Education Department said Monday that it is “spearheading … foreign source compliance and verification efforts” with DeVos at the helm and noted that it has uncovered “numerous” university contracts with Chinese government-subsidized companies and “at least one” with “direct contracts with the Chinese Communist Party itself.”
The Education Department announced individual investigations into foreign funding and possible illicit foreign ties at Georgetown University and Texas A&M University last June, Cornell University and Rutgers in July, MIT and the University of Maryland in September, Harvard and Yale in February, the University of Texas in April, and Case Western Reserve University in May.
The Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, led by Sen. Rob Portman, released a 109-page bipartisan report in November concluding foreign countries “seek to exploit America’s openness to advance their own national interests” and “the most aggressive of them has been China.” It found China used its Thousand Talents Program, which seeks to recruit academics to gain access to proprietary information, for the past two decades to exploit access to U.S. research labs and academic institutions. “China unfairly uses the American research and expertise it obtains for its own economic and military gain,” they said, criticizing the federal government’s failure to combat the problem.
The subcommittee released an initial report in February 2019 warning about foreign funding and Chinese influence both in K-12 classrooms and university campuses nationwide, noting that “foreign government spending on U.S. schools is effectively a black hole.”
These reports spurred the Education Department into action.
Portman introduced legislation last week to amend Section 117 of the Higher Education Act of 1965 by lowering the reporting threshold required for U.S. universities that receive foreign gifts from $250,000 down to $50,000 while empowering the Education Department to punish schools that fail to report.
The Ohio Republican also recently released a report detailing how the federal government provided “little-to-no oversight” of Chinese state-owned telecoms for two decades and how China is targeting U.S. communications the same way it has targeted education, research, and personal data. That subcommittee also has released reports on theft of U.S. research and cyberattacks against U.S. companies.
The Justice Department has increased its scrutiny of China’s activities recently, starting the China Initiative in 2018 and prosecuting Chinese nationals in espionage cases, cracking down on hacking schemes, prosecuting efforts to steal trade secrets, and going after the Thousand Talents Program, including Harvard professor Charles Lieber.
A number of Republican senators proposed a ban on issuing visas to graduate students in technology fields, while House Democrats have raised concerns that ethnically Chinese scientists are being racially profiled. The Trump administration announced in May it would revoke thousands of visas held by Chinese graduate students who had ties to the Chinese military.
