The Foundation for American Innovation has been recommending more transparency about foreign contributions to colleges and universities so that Congress and the public can understand the scope of foreign influence on American campuses. We published a report revealing a range of problems (including lax enforcement, missing and confusing data, and opaque reporting) and even built a public dashboard with existing data to show how the Department of Education could improve transparency. More recently, we’ve shown the extent of funding from countries of concern, revealing the connection between unaccountable funds in higher education and some of America’s major domestic and international challenges.
While the Department of Education has made things worse by taking steps to further reduce transparency, lawmakers are now pushing back.
Writing for RealClearEducation this week, Paul Moore, a former federal prosecutor and Department of Education investigator, described the Biden administration’s recent effort to undo a Trump administration project to improve transparency:
[I]n June 2020 the U.S. Department of Education launched an online portal for reporting foreign source gifts and contracts valued at $250,000 or more per calendar year, as required by Section 117 of the Higher Education Act of 1965. But in June 2024, the Education Department announced that due to a “contract change” it had decommissioned the reporting portal’s interactive data table for analyzing foreign funding disclosures. The Department’s inexplicable decision removed an important tool for accountability after decades of massive disclosure failures by universities.
Moore explains that the additional public transparency was encouraging colleges and universities to follow the law and actually disclose foreign contributions, after years of many institutions routinely ignoring their reporting responsibilities. But the move to shutter the reporting portal will end public transparency and allow colleges and universities to go back to their old ways, despite growing concerns about foreign influence on American campuses.
But Congress is pushing back. The House Appropriations Committee’s report accompanying the funding bill for the Department of Education requires the Department to improve transparency about foreign influence in American postsecondary education.
This report language is consistent with recommendations we submitted in written testimony to the House Appropriations Committee in May. These changes will give Congress and the public greater visibility into the way that foreign funding influences American colleges and universities and encourage stronger enforcement and oversight of disclosures.
Colleges and universities have a legal responsibility to disclose foreign contributions. And the Department of Education has an obligation to enforce the law and make this important information public. While additional legislative reforms are needed to expose the full scope of foreign influence, Americans should welcome Congress using the power of the purse to hold both accountable.
