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The U.S. Department of Education will now require colleges and universities to disclose the specific identities of foreign donors and contract partners, ending the practice of allowing these contributors to remain anonymous in public records.
The department plans to make the specific foreign counterparty information available to the public by early to mid-summer, an unnamed senior Education Department official recently toldThe Daily Signal.
Section 117 of the Higher Education Act requires institutions of higher education to disclose foreign source gifts and contracts of $250,000 or more annually to the department, the agency states on its website.
The law also requires that those same foreign funding disclosures be made available by the department for public inspection to protect national security and academic integrity by providing transparency regarding potential foreign influence in higher education, it states.
But that has not been happening, according to the senior official. The Daily Signalreported:
Previous administrations allowed universities to mark certain funding sources on their records as exempt from disclosure in public records requests.
“The department, for years, has actually provided a way for universities to not disclose this information to the public,” the official said. “We’re done with that business. We’re not doing that. The law says we have to make available these records for public inspection. We’re going to do it.” …
“The American people have every right to know that,” the official said.
Some experts from the center-right National Association of Scholars have called on Congress to go further:
Section 117 should require universities to explain how they use foreign funding, not just that they received it. Current reports list dollar amounts and source countries, but omit the details needed to judge risk. At a minimum, universities should report whether the funds are a gift or a contract, which department or program receives them, and whether they support research, teaching, training, or access to data in sensitive fields. Lawmakers should also revisit the $250,000 threshold to prevent foreign entities from avoiding disclosure by splitting funding into smaller payments.
The situation appears massive in scale: foreign countries and entities funneled $67.6 billion into American universities over the past four decades, according to a recent U.S. Department of Education report released earlier this year.
