Overview
- The Department of Education launched foreignfundinghighered.gov to display reported foreign gifts and contracts to U.S. colleges and universities.
- The database lists about $62.4 billion in total disclosures, with Qatar leading at roughly $6.6 billion, followed by Germany at $4.4 billion, the United Kingdom at $4.3 billion, and China at $4.1 billion (about $6 billion including Hong Kong).
- Cornell University is the top recipient of Qatari funding at about $2.3 billion, with Carnegie Mellon ($1.0 billion), Texas A&M ($992.8 million), and Georgetown ($971.1 million) also receiving large sums from Qatar.
- Harvard University has taken in about $4 billion in foreign funding overall, and 527 U.S. institutions have reported entries spanning several decades under the Section 117 reporting threshold of $250,000 per year.
- Republican lawmakers and policy advocates say the disclosures raise national‑security concerns about foreign influence, while some reporting cautions the dataset’s accuracy and completeness have not been independently verified.