OPINION:
For decades, America’s most prestigious universities have asked the federal government and the public to trust them to disclose their foreign financial relationships.
Too many failed. And then failed again.
This month, the Education Department is scheduled to release the names of foreign sources associated with historical disclosures under Section 117 of the Higher Education Act. That release should proceed without further delay.
Section 117 requires federally supported colleges and universities to report qualifying gifts and contracts from foreign sources totaling $250,000 or more from a single foreign source in a calendar year.
Yet for years, the public has often been told only the country from which money originated, not the identity of the organization or individual providing it.
“China” is not a counterparty.
Was the money provided by a private donor? A Chinese university? A state-owned enterprise? A government ministry? A company connected to the People’s Liberation Army? A foundation or intermediary?
Without names, the data provides only a fraction of the transparency Congress intended.
The argument for disclosure would be strong even if universities had impeccable compliance records. They do not.
Beginning in 2019, investigations by the Education Department prompted universities to disclose approximately $6.5 billion in previously unreported foreign gifts and contracts. Yale alone had underreported approximately $375 million, while Stanford disclosed more than $64 million in anonymous Chinese donations without identifying the donors.
The problem did not disappear.
According to the Department of Education, more than $2 billion in reportable foreign gifts and contracts were reported late between Feb. 28, 2025, and Dec. 16, 2025, in direct violation of statutory requirements.
The Section 117 record contains additional warning signs. The University of California, Berkeley, acknowledged failing to report millions of dollars in foreign government funding. A congressional investigation found that Georgia Tech failed to make timely disclosure of millions in Chinese funding associated with its joint institute in China — a disclosure dating back as early as 2013 that was not revealed until 2024.
That should end the argument that institutional self-reporting is enough.
The evidence extends beyond Section 117.
The Justice Department recently announced a $2.1 million settlement with Ohio State University, resolving allegations that the school failed to disclose employees’ relationships with China in connection with NASA and National Science Foundation funding.
According to the government, Ohio State’s own faculty activity reports had identified affiliations with Chinese universities and state-run research organizations since at least 2014. Ohio State also learned in 2019 that a principal investigator on NASA grants participated in China’s Thousand Talents Program.
NASA and the National Science Foundation were allegedly not notified until 2023.
The information existed inside the university. The university knew. For years, the federal agencies whose funding decisions depended on disclosure allegedly did not know.
This was not Ohio State’s first such case. In 2022, the university paid more than $875,000 to resolve separate allegations involving failures to disclose a professor’s foreign university employment, participation in a foreign talent plan and foreign government research support.
Other universities have faced similar allegations.
Stanford paid approximately $1.9 million in 2023 to resolve allegations involving undisclosed foreign research support, including relationships involving Fudan University and the National Natural Science Foundation of China.
The University of Delaware paid $715,580 in 2024 over allegations involving undisclosed Chinese university employment, participation in a Chinese talent program and Chinese government research funding connected to a NASA award.
That same year, the University of Maryland, College Park, paid $500,000 to resolve allegations that federal grant proposals failed to disclose foreign research funding, including support from Huawei Technologies and Taobao (China) Software, an Alibaba company.
Numerous settlements, complaints, investigations and enforcement actions have raised similar concerns regarding undisclosed foreign funding, research relationships, talent program participation and other China-related ties. Taken together with billions of dollars in late or previously unreported Section 117 transactions, they reveal a persistent problem: Blind trust is not an oversight strategy.
That is why counterparty names matter. Transparency creates outside auditors.
Researchers can compare counterparties against Commerce Department restrictions, Pentagon lists, Chinese state-owned enterprises, military universities and organizations linked to the Chinese Communist Party. Journalists can identify patterns across institutions. Federal agencies can compare Education Department records against grant disclosures.
Congress can identify systemic problems instead of discovering them one university at a time.
Universities have had years to demonstrate that internal compliance and self-reporting are enough. The record says they are not. Billions of dollars were disclosed only after federal scrutiny, and billions more were reported late.
Federal prosecutors have repeatedly encountered cases in which China-related relationships were not disclosed to agencies providing taxpayer money.
America’s top universities had the opportunity to do the right thing without meaningful public scrutiny. Too many failed that test.
The answer is not more trust. It is more transparency.
The Education Department should release the names of foreign counterparties and allow the American public to see who is funding its universities.
• L.J. Eads is a former U.S. Air Force intelligence officer and the founder of Data Abyss, where he develops data-driven tools to identify and counter China’s adversarial intelligence and military activities.
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