Federal Student Aid (FSA) recently posted updated information about foreign gifts and contracts reported by institutions as of Feb. 28, 2025.
Information below provides a snapshot of key findings in the data.
More than 30 years ago, Congress enacted disclosure requirements to promote public transparency about the role of foreign funding in U.S. higher education. Section 117 of the Higher Education Act of 1965, as amended(HEA), requires institutions of higher education that receive federal financial assistance to disclose semiannually to the U.S. Department of Education (the Department) any gifts received from and/or contracts with a foreign source that, alone or combined, are valued at $250,000 or more in a calendar year. The statute also requires institutions to report information when owned or controlled by a foreign source. More information about Section 117 is available on the Knowledge Center Foreign Gift and Contract Reporting Topics page.
The HEA requires institutions to update their reporting twice per year and submit information no later than January 31 or July 31, whichever is sooner. Foreign gift and contract data reported for the Jan. 31 reporting period can be downloaded in a comprehensive Excel file displaying all public records from the Section 117 Foreign Gift and Contract Data page. The reporting period often extends beyond January 31 or July 31 due to clarifications requested by FSA. For that reason, the “reported as of” date can be later than January 31 or July 31.
FSA’s latest foreign gift and contract reporting data set shows over 529 additional foreign gift and contract transactions valued at approximately $290 million since the Department’s last data release from the July 31, 2024, reporting period. There were over 269 institutions self-reporting transactions from over 131 countries. The largest dollar amounts of gifts and contracts reported to the Department between the July 31 reporting period, and January 31 reporting period, were from sources in Canada, Hong Kong, Japan, Norway, and Saudi Arabia. The institutions reporting the largest total dollar amounts in foreign gifts and contracts since the last reporting period, were Harvard University, Stanford University, University of California, Berkeley, University of California, Los Angeles, and Yale University.