On Monday, The Daily Signal posted an article about about a policy change in the Department of Education.
The article reports:
The Department of Education will soon require universities to publicly disclose the counterparties of foreign funding, a senior Education Department official told The Daily Signal.
Section 117 of the Higher Education Act requires higher education institutions to report gifts and contracts valued at $250,000 or more to the Department of Education, to make them available for public inspection.
Universities currently report counterparties, their gifters or contractors, to the agency. However, the identities of foreign counterparties are not made public, which the senior department official said violates the law. The totals received from counterparties of concern are listed in the Section 117 Foreign Gift & Contract Reporting portal, but the gifters’ identities are not named.
…The Education Department is following the rulemaking process, providing notice to universities and allowing for public comment on the new requirement. The department plans to make the counterparty information available for public inspection by early to mid-summer.
“That’s the part the universities do not want to see happen,” the official said. “They’ve spent years trying to make it not happen.”
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.”
Harvard University receives the most from counterparties of concern—$634 million—according to the agency’s portal. Almost all of the gifts and contracts came from counterparties in China.
It would be naive to believe that the money given by foreign sources does not influence what is being taught. With this information now available to the public, parents will have another criteria to evaluate when choosing a school for their child.