U.S. universities awash in foreign funding from Qatar, China, Saudi Arabia

U.S. universities have received tens of billions of dollars in the past four decades from foreign governments and entities, not all of them friendly.

Newly released data from the Education Department found that colleges accepted more than $5.2 billion in international gifts and contracts — partly for research — last year, part of the nearly $70 billion received since the federal government began requiring higher-education institutions to report their foreign funding.

The biggest overseas funder: Qatar, which has given $7.7 billion to U.S. universities over the past four decades, followed by China at $6.4 billion, Germany at $4.7 billion, England at $4.2 billion and Saudi Arabia at $4.2 billion.

In terms of recipients, Harvard led the list with $4.2 billion, then Carnegie Mellon University at $3.9 billion, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology at $3.5 billion, Cornell University at $3.1 billion and the University of Pennsylvania at $2.8 billion.

Foreign countries frequently contract with colleges for research programs and other academic priorities.

The disclosures unveiled Wednesday represent the most comprehensive look at the financial relationships between U.S. universities and foreign entities since Congress began requiring reporting in 1986 with the passage of Section 117 of the Higher Education Act.

The data can be found on the department’s newly upgraded Section 117 Foreign Gift & Contract Reporting portal, which includes information from 555 universities. The portal went online this year.

“Thanks to the Trump administration’s new accountability portal, the American people have unprecedented visibility into the foreign dollars flowing into our colleges and universities — including funding from countries and entities that are involved in activities that threaten America’s national security,” said Education Secretary Linda McMahon in a statement.

“This marks a new era of transparency for the American people and streamlined compliance for colleges and universities, making it easier than ever for institutions to meet their legal obligations,” she said.

Section 117 requires U.S. educational institutions receiving federal funding to report their foreign gifts and contracts each year, including those from state and nonstate actors, and yet the law was lightly enforced until the department began cracking down under the first Trump administration in 2019.

A senior department official said most of $67.6 billion in total foreign dollars was reported after 2019. An additional $2 billion-$3 billion is expected to be added to the portal by Feb. 28, bringing the 40-year total to about $70 billion.

“Under the first Trump administration, we began civil investigations into this because reporting was so bad,” the official said. “You’ll recall there were significant prominent universities that went for years without reporting even a single dime, even though they had hundreds of millions in reportable gifts and contracts.”

The portal includes a breakdown of funds received by universities from countries of concern, a federal term that refers to China, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Russia and Venezuela.

Since reporting began, Harvard has received the most funding from countries seen as national-security threats at $610 million, followed by MIT at $490 million and New York University at $462 million.

Ms. McMahon emphasized the portal’s implications for tracking foreign influence in national security, given the amount of research conducted by universities for the federal government.

“This transparency is essential not only to preserving the integrity of academic research, but also to ensure the security and resilience of our nation,” she said.

For example, the portal shows that the University of North Dakota has received $48 million in contracts from China, which includes $37 million to train pilots.

Given that the university has also been a leading federal partner on drone technology, “you might be able to then see why countries such as China are suddenly headed to North Dakota,” said the senior department official.

President Trump made foreign-funding reporting a priority with his April 23 executive order, “Transparency Regarding Foreign Influence at American Universities,” which sought to “end the secrecy surrounding foreign funds in American educational institutions.”

Of the $5.2 billion reported in 2025, Qatar topped the list of foreign sources at $1.1 billion, followed by the U.K. at $633 million and China at $528 million.

Carnegie Mellon and MIT led the list of university recipients with almost $1 billion each, followed by Stanford University at $775 million and Harvard at $324 million.

Getting universities to report their foreign funding in a timely fashion remains a struggle, despite the department’s push.

More than $2.1 billion of the $5.2 billion disclosed in 2025 was “not timely reported,” the department official said.

“I would just say, try that with the IRS. It won’t work,” the official said. “We also have a situation where we’re at 35-40% noncompliance by universities, so that’s a big improvement from where we were in 2019 when these enforcement efforts really began, but it’s still not good.”

Four universities — Harvard, Penn, Cal Berkeley and the University of Michigan — are now under Section 117 investigations for “inaccurate or untimely foreign source gift and contract disclosures.”

Three of the four universities have since provided data production in a “timely way,” the official said.