Universities in the United States reported $6.5 billion in previously undisclosed gifts and contracts from foreign sources as a result of an investigation by the Department of Education.
Federal law requires universities to disclose substantial foreign gifts and contracts to the Department of Education (DOE) twice a year. Many have for years failed to do so, while others have underreported. After the department opened an investigation into the matter in 2019, 60 schools that had never complied with the law disclosed $350 million in previously unreported foreign funds, according to a report (pdf) released by the DOE on Oct. 20.
Education Secretary Betsy DeVos unveiled the findings of the report at an event on Oct. 20, alongside officials from the Justice Department and the State Department.
“The threat is real, so we took action to make sure the public is afforded the transparency the law requires,” Devos said. “We found pervasive noncompliance by higher-ed institutions and significant foreign entanglement with America’s colleges and universities.”
The vast majority of the foreign funds went to America’s largest and most prestigious universities, which have received billions in assets through a bevy of intermediaries. All of the institutions involved are in the meantime dependent on U.S. taxpayer subsidies while operating largely “divorced from any sense of obligation to our taxpayers or concern for our American national interests, security, or values,” the report states.
The schools retroactively reported $2 billion in foreign gifts and contracts during the first half of 2020 alone. One school, which isn’t identified in the report, failed to report $760 million in foreign funding. University officials told the DOE they were “dumbfounded” by the reporting error. Another unnamed school failed to report $1.2 billion in foreign gifts and contracts…
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