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What the Education Department’s New Portal Means for Foreign Influence on University Campuses
On Jan. 2, the Department of Education officially launched its new and improved portal for universities to report foreign funding.
In an earlier update, the department noted, the “current reporting portal had not been meaningfully updated since the first Trump administration.”
This new portal is intended to make it easier for higher ed institutions to report foreign funding, resulting in more timely and accurate disclosures.
Before launching the system, the department conducted extensive beta testing with several universities to solicit feedback, identify any bugs and ensure institutional familiarity with the portal’s reporting features
Congress first required U.S. universities to publicly report certain foreign gifts and contracts in 1986.
Under Section 117 of the Higher Education Act of 1965, institutions must report foreign gifts and contracts totaling $250,000 or more in a calendar year. Responsibility for enforcing compliance, collecting disclosures, and disseminating the data was placed with the Department of Education.
For more than 30 years, however, the department made little effort to enforce Section 117.
That changed in 2019, when the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations released a report examining China’s impact on the U.S. education system.
A subsequent 2020 report from the Department of Education’s Office of the General Counsel found, “up to 70 percent of all U.S. colleges and universities fail to comply with the law, and those that do substantially underreport.”
These findings raised serious concerns, given the potential influence foreign governments and organizations can exert on both public and private institutions in the United States.
During the first Trump administration, the Department of Education opened 19 investigations into potential Section 117 violations.
Just three months after the department overhauled the foreign gifts reporting portal under then-Secretary of Education Betsey DeVos. More than 7,000 foreign funding transactions were reported, compared with the 500 to 1,000 historically received over a six-month period.
These results demonstrated that stronger enforcement and clearer reporting mechanisms could dramatically improve compliance.
After Trump left office in 2020, enforcement efforts again waned.
The Biden administration did not open any new investigations and transferred enforcement responsibilities from the Office of General Counsel to the Office of Federal Student Aid, which primarily administers student aid programs and lacks robust enforcement authority.
The consequences of this shift were significant.
The National Association of Scholars, which maintains its own database of foreign gifts and contracts, found more than 100 public records requests filed with public universities and state agencies nationwide since 2010. They also reported that at least $1 billion in foreign funding went underreported between 2021 and 2022.
According to NAS, this represented approximately 39% of total foreign funds that should have been disclosed under Section 117, based on its estimate of $2.6 billion in foreign funding identified through FOIA-obtained records.
Shortly after taking office, President Trump made Section 117 compliance a priority, signing an executive order to end secrecy surrounding foreign funding in American higher education. He made his goal clear: We must safeguard U.S. students and research from foreign exploitation.
Since Jan. 20 2025, the Department of Education has launched new foreign funding compliance investigations involving Harvard University, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Michigan, and the University of California, Berkeley, alongside continued efforts to modernize the federal reporting portal. The Department of Education also returned federal oversight priorities to the Office of General Counsel.
Congress has also taken steps to address foreign influence at U.S. universities.
In April 2025, the House of Representatives passed the DETERRENT Act, which would lower the general reporting threshold from $250,000 to $50,000. For countries of concern, like China or Russia, all foreign funding was required to be reported.
For universities accepting gifts or entering into contracts with foreign countries of concern, the bill also required institutional officials to obtain a waiver from the Department of Education. The Senate has yet to take up the bill, but given its potential to strengthen and close loopholes in reporting requirements, lawmakers should consider passing it promptly.
There is no better time to hold foreign governments and entities accountable for the gifts and contracts they enter into with U.S. public and private universities.
As the National Association of Scholars has documented, countries, including China, Qatar, and Russia, have exerted considerable influence through substantial financial contributions.
The current administration’s attempts to improve reporting mechanisms and enforce existing law represent a welcome change after years of inaction and a necessary step to restore transparency and protect American higher education from foreign influence.
The post What the Education Department’s New Portal Means for Foreign Influence on University Campuses appeared first on The Daily Signal.
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