Foreign donations from Qatar, China, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates to the United States Higher Education Learning Institutions, running into $6.5 billion, were under-reported or unreported.
This follows from an investigation by President Trump’s administration. The institutions that failed to report education donations include; Yale, Chicago, Boston, Colorado Boulder, Carnegie Mellon as well as Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Education department initiated the disclosures on foreign donations
A sequel of investigations done in July 2019 by the education department initiated the disclosures while Wall-street Journal became the first whistle-blower.
Betsy Devos, the education secretary reiterated that it was all about honesty. Devos remarked that if universities were receiving foreign donations, then their local donors and the taxpayers had the right to know the number of foreign donations and their respective donor sources. She stated that it was indeed a requirement of the law.
The investigative tentacles also reached out to the Ivy League universities. Yale and Harvard have obscure reporting foreign contracts and gifts amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars.
In particular, Yale University failed to report $375 million over the last four academic years following a report by departmental officials.
Harvard, on the other hand, said that it lacks the ability to issue thorough oversight while tracking foreign donations. Harvard’s indictment followed the lying case of the chemistry and Biology Departmental head about his involvement in the Thousands Talent Plan, a mission by the Chinese government for overseas recruitment of scientists and researchers.
Disclosure of foreign donations required by law
A section of the Higher Education Act (Section 117) directs that institutions that acquire foreign donations should report any foreign donations that exceed $250,000.
Only less than 300 of the approximated 6000 US tertiary institutions follow the directive and report the foreign donations, a report from the Education Department stated. With the biggest chunk of the foreign aid being donated to the 50 biggest institutions, a report from Senate Permanent Subcommittee indicated that the schools intermittently failed to report, therefore, declaring foreign donations to US colleges and Universities as a ‘black hole.
Devos said that as they continued delving into the matter, most institutions continued to under-report or fail to report altogether. She had also put across that his department would continue to bring universities into accountability and to ensure full and accurate reporting as is the requirement of the law.
The biggest schools are multi-billion enterprises that engage shadow foundations, overseas campuses and sophisticated structure for revenue collection and mixed up with domestic funds from grants and tuition, the education department stated.
They solicit funds from foreign governments that are perceived to be hostile towards America and seem to project ‘soft power’ while stealing research and sensitive development data while spreading propaganda that benefits other foreign governments.
Terry Hartle, the senior vice president of government and public affairs, has been talking with national security agencies regularly to dispel rumors about the foreign-funded ideological influence on U.S. universities and underscoring the benefits of global research cooperation. He explained the importance of foreign funds declaration:
The challenge in the last two or three years is that American perceptions about research funded by foreign entities (at U.S. universities) have changed, there’s an anxiety.
