Trump Admin Opens Online Portal to Track Foreign Money Given to US Universities

The Trump administration unveiled a public portal on Jan. 5 through which people can look up how much foreign money is being given to American universities.

The “Foreign Gift and Contract” public transparency dashboard tracks more than $62 billion donated to U.S. higher learning institutions from foreign nations.

Qatar tops the list of countries, with $6.6 billion donated, followed by Germany at $4.4 billion and England at $4.3 billion.

The portal lists China as the fourth-biggest foreign contributor, giving more than $4 billion, but donations from China and Hong Kong combined equate to more than $6 billion.

The top three recipients of money from China were New York University, Harvard University, and Stanford University. The three institutions receiving the most money from Hong Kong were Harvard, Yale, and Stanford.

Harvard University received a combined $590 million in funding from China and Hong Kong, according to the dashboard.

The university did not return a request for comment about the funding.

Rep. John Moolenaar (R-Mich.), chair of the congressional Select Committee on China, said the portal brings transparency to universities.

“Though this portal, we can all see that China has given nearly $6 billion to our nation’s universities in order to transfer critical research, influence, and academic talent to China,” Moolenaar said in a statement.

The committee released investigations last year on research security and China’s influence on American campuses.

The public dashboard reported on Jan. 5 all data submitted to the U.S. Department of Education as of Jan. 31, 2025.

The Trump administration attempted to put a public information portal in place during his first term, but the Biden administration did not enforce reporting or monitor potential foreign influence at U.S. colleges and universities, according to the education agency.

The new system was designed with improved features, including the ability to upload foreign funding disclosures in bulk, improved public transparency, and other tools.

“The new portal will assist our institutions of higher education in fulfilling their statutory responsibilities and enable us to protect our national security by facilitating improved compliance,” Education Secretary Linda McMahon said in a statement. “America’s taxpayer funded colleges and universities have both a moral and legal obligation to be fully transparent with the U.S. government and the American people about their foreign financial relationships.”

The Trump administration took steps to mitigate foreign influence on U.S. campuses during President Donald Trump’s first term. Trump designated China’s U.S.-based Confucius Institutes located on campuses across the nation as foreign missions and labeled them as soft power tools of the Chinese communist regime.

In its first week in office, the Biden administration rescinded Trump’s policy designating the Confucius Institutes as foreign missions, reversing Trump’s directive and reducing oversight on the institutions, according to the America First Policy Institute.