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 law is very clear,” the official said. “It says that the Department of Education has to make available for public inspection the reports submitted by the universities. We’re not doing that right now.”
Naming the counterparties will reveal to the public if universities are funded by concerning entities, the official argued.
“It’s appropriate for them to have to be transparent with the American people, with Congress, with the media,” the official said.
Currently, even members of Congress don’t have access to the identities of counterparties of concern.
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.”
