On its studentaid.ed.gov website, the Department of Education (DoEd) describes the foreign gift and contract report obligation created by section 117 of the Higher Education Act, codified at 20 USC 1011f:
"Section 117 of the Higher Education Act of 1965 (HEA), as amended, requires certain institutions that participate in the Title IV student assistance programs to submit to the Secretary disclosure reports containing information about gifts received from any foreign source, contracts with a foreign entity, and any ownership interests in or control over the institution by a foreign entity.
Specifically, all Title IV domestic institutions that offer a bachelor's degree or higher, or that offer a transfer program of not less than two years that is acceptable for credit toward a bachelor's degree, are required to report contracts with or gifts from the same foreign source that, alone or combined, have a value of $250,000 or more for a calendar year; and/or if the institution is owned or controlled by a foreign source. Additional information about this requirement is available on pages 2-180 to 2-182 of the Consumer Information and School Reporting chapter of the Federal Student Aid Handbook.
The report below provides a complete listing of all foreign gifts and/or contracts reported by Title IV institutions for the previous six years. This data is self-reported by institutions. Negative amounts indicate an adjustment to a previously received amount. There may be additional instances of foreign gift reporting that are tied to pending applications currently undergoing review. Data from pending applications are not included in this report until the application review has been completed.
A statutory requirement to disclose foreign-sourced gifts and contracts has existed for more than three decades, although the Department of Education has never published regulations to further define a school's obligations. In a February 1995 communication DoEd stated, "Although the statute permits the Secretary to issue regulations concerning this reporting requirement, the Secretary has determined that regulations are unnecessary." DoEd has likewise offered only scant guidance to schools on the government's interpretation of the scope of the requirement:
- In February 1995, DoEd issued GEN-95-12, in which DoEd "intended to inform institutions about the statute and provide affected institutions with an address to which the reports should be forwarded." Aside from specifying a mailing address and fax number, this publication basically either paraphrased or repeated the text of the statute itself.
- In October 2004, DoEd issued a "Dear Colleague" letter, GEN-04-11, which provided some instructions and answers to a few frequently asked questions.
This basically has left schools on their own to interpret and comply with the statute's broad definitions and provisions. Compliance is typically managed through the offices of general counsel, accounting and finance, and offices that report data directly to the Department of Education. Under the statute, if it is determined that there was a "knowing or willful failure to comply" with these reporting requirements, the institution must pay "the full costs to the United States of obtaining compliance, including all associated costs of investigation and compliance." This would likely also include the costs of any litigation.
Recently, DoEd has been reviewing school compliance with foreign gift and contract disclosure reporting, and has sent letters to some institutions of higher education, either reminding them of reporting obligations under 20 USC 1011f, or notifying them of "investigations related to the universities' reports of defined gifts and contracts, including restricted and conditional gifts or contracts, from or with a statutorily defined foreign source." There is some concern about whether this may indicate an intention to hold schools to more exacting standards that DoEd has not yet fully articulated.
A concise article in The National Law Journal reviews the background of why the administration is now so interested in this old law. According to the article, it stems in part from concern about Confucius institutes which then led to an assessment of whether schools were reporting Confucius Institute money to DoEd as a "foreign gift or contract." Most weren't, according to the February 2019 bipartisan report of the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations cited in the National Law Journal article.
On September 4, 2019 DoEd published notice of a proposed new form that would be used by schools to report gifts and contracts under 20 USC 1011f. Comments were due on or before November 5, 2019. Visit regulations.gov to read the notice, supplemental documentation describing the form, and comments DoEd received.