The U.S. Department of Education told JNS that it is “committed to reinvigorating” enforcement of requirements for U.S. colleges and universities to report foreign funding.
JNS asked the department about criticism that large reported increases in Arab funding of U.S. colleges and universities have come about with little transparency about the purposes of the donations.
Under Section 117 of the Higher Education Act, nearly all colleges and universities offering at least a bachelor’s degree are required to “report all foreign gifts and contracts that alone, or in combination with all others from the foreign source, total $250,000 or more in a calendar year.”
Julie Hartman, a department spokeswoman, told JNS that “after years of inadequate disclosures, the first Trump administration created the reporting portal in 2020, enabling hundreds of institutions to report billions of dollars in previously undisclosed foreign gifts and contracts.”
The Biden administration failed to open any new Section 117 investigations in its four years, the spokeswoman said.
“It also failed to upgrade and update the website’s capabilities,” Hartman said of the site, which serves as a repository for the relevant data.
The second Trump administration opened four new Section 117 investigations or records requests, including into Harvard University, University of Pennsylvania, University of Michigan and University of California-Berkeley and “will improve the reporting portal in the coming months,” she said.
She added that the Education Department “is committed to reinvigorating Section 117 enforcement to restore accountability to universities.”
