The Trump administration is casting new scrutiny on foreign funding at U.S. colleges and universities — a push critics say is part of a broader effort to assert control over higher education under the guise of national security.
The big picture: The Department of Education is pointing to newly-revealed data on foreign gifts and contracts to schools as a national security issue, which is misleading, Alexander Cooley, a political scientist researching foreign authoritarian influence, tells Axios.
Driving the news: The Education Department on Wednesday released foreign funding disclosure data submitted by colleges and universities for 2025, "documenting over 8,300 transactions worth more than $5.2 billion in reportable foreign gifts and contracts."
- More than half of that went to just four schools: Carnegie Mellon University, MIT, Stanford University and Harvard University.
- The largest foreign sources of funding came from Qatar (over $1.1 billion), the United Kingdom (over $633 million), Switzerland (over $451 million), Japan (over $374 million), Germany (over $292 million), and Saudi Arabia (over $285 million), according to the department.
- The data is now available for "public inspection" via an online portal.
Catch up quick: Trump issued an executive order last year enforcing Section 117 of the Higher Education Act, which requires colleges and universities to report significant sources of foreign funding.
- "Even when foreign funding is reported, its true sources are often hidden," the order claimed.
- Trump also said at the time that his administration sought to "protect the marketplace of ideas from propaganda sponsored by foreign governments, and safeguard America's students and research from foreign exploitation."
- Universities receiving federal funds are required to disclose foreign gifts and contracts worth $250,000 or more annually, for which the Education Department started releasing incomplete 2025 data last month.
Since last January, the Department has initiated four new investigations under Section 117.
- The includes Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Michigan, "amid reports of inaccurate and untimely foreign source gift and contract disclosures," the department noted.
What they're saying: The disclosures include "funding from countries and entities that are involved in activities that threaten America's national security," Education Secretary Linda McMahon said in a press release.
- "This transparency is essential not only to preserving the integrity of academic research but also to ensure the security and resilience of our nation," she said.
- The White House and the Education Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Yes, but: Characterizing this funding as a threat to national security is distorting things, Cooley says, adding that the data has "real issues."
- The country of origin "does not necessarily reflect the actual provenance of the individual or entity that's giving," he says. "And on the flip side, donations from foreign individuals channelled through shell companies are not classified as foreign donations."
The reporting requirements also "collapse a lot of different kind of activities," he says.
- Those activities include tuition reimbursements and scholarships for foreign students, he says, as well as contracts for "joint campuses and satellite campuses" abroad.
- Qatar, from which schools reported the second largest outflow, has an education initiative sponsored by the Qatari government, and a number of U.S. schools — such as Cornell University and Carnegie Mellon University — have operations there.
Zoom in: Foreign donations should be scrutinized like domestic ones, Cooley says, adding that he thinks transparency is generally a good idea for both, namely where individual actors are concerned.
- Jeffrey Epstein's initial donations to schools like Columbia and Harvard "were not viewed as problematic," Cooley says.
- "After the reputation becomes toxic for very good reason," you see universities reassessing their relationships, he added, citing MIT's disclosure about its relationship with Saudi Arabia following the assassination of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
Between the lines: The Trump administration's grilling of schools stands in contrast to its softening of scrutiny elsewhere, such as lobbyists for foreign governments, Cooley says.
The bottom line: "I don't think the insight that money changes things is wrong. It happens in all sectors," Cooley says.
- "We just have to be really precise about what the channels of influence are and what we're trying to stop, as opposed to this guilt by association dynamic we have."
