A new report from the Department of Education revealed that U.S. colleges and universities have been underreporting the funding from “foreign adversaries.” Adversaries include China and Russia, and it has gone on for years.
The Department of Education issued a report last week accusing colleges of failing to comply with a law requiring biannual disclosure of all foreign gifts and contracts totaling $250,000 or more.
“We found pervasive noncompliance by higher ed institutions and significant foreign entanglement with America’s colleges and universities,” Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos said at an event marking the report’s release. “Our initial investigations catalyzed disclosure of approximately $6.5 billion in previously unreported foreign funds.”
Fewer than 300 institutions have reported foreign gifts and contracts to the department. That is despite the requirement under Section 117 of the Higher Education Act of 1965.
According to a 1986 law, U.S. universities must disclose donations or contracts amounting to $250,000 or more from foreign entities.
THE CRACKDOWN BEGINS
The Department of Education is starting to crack down as reports percolate that China is stealing an estimated $300-$600 billion in U.S. intellectual property each year.
The report is based on investigations of twelve upper echelon institutions. The probe included Ivy League Harvard, Yale, and Stanford, along with top Washington D.C. university, Georgetown. The probe discovered a combined 6.5 billion dollars in undisclosed foreign funding.
The discovery also revealed that schools received funds from Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Russia, and China. The majority of the twelve schools had financial ties to Huawei, a Chinese tech company that has been banned from selling their products in the U.S. through 2021. Huawei is a national security threat. The school officials obviously know that.
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The report also found that the bigger and wealthier universities “aggressively pursued and accepted foreign money” while failing to disclose the amount of the funds they received or where it came from.
What did universities give in return?
UNIVERSITIES ARE UNHAPPY
Education Secretary Betsy DeVos found “pervasive noncompliance” from higher learning institutions significantly embroiled with foreign entities. “For decades, enforcement was lax, but not anymore,” she stated. “We took action to make sure the public is afforded the transparency the law requires.”
The universities are balking. It might discourage foreign donors, they say. If it does, shouldn’t that set off alarm bells? They are concerned about overwhelming their accounting departments, but all they have to do is use some of the money donated by our enemies and hire more accountants.
The DoE isn’t concerned about their complaints: “Institutions manage to track every cent owed and paid by their students; there is no doubt they can – and indeed do – track funds coming from foreign sources, including those adversarial to American interests.”
That’s right, every student pays up, of that, you can be sure.
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