Biden administration walks back federal oversight of Confucius Institutes

HIGHER ED DIVE

Jeremy Bauer-Wolf

February 10, 2021

Dive Brief:

• The Biden administration has withdrawn a rule that would have required colleges that participate in the Student and Exchange Visitor Program to disclose if they had financial ties to a Chinese culture education program that frequently partners with U.S. institutions.

• Political pressures surrounding the controversial Confucius Institutes escalated during the last administration, which accused China of pushing propaganda into American classrooms.

• The Trump administration’s Education Department cracked down on colleges’ financial relationships with foreign entities.

Dive Insight:

A withering Senate subcommittee report in 2019 heightened concerns about the Confucius Institutes. The report stated that nearly 70% of colleges that received more than $250,000 in funding from Hanban — the affiliate of the Chinese Ministry of Education that manages the institutes — failed to properly report that information to the federal government.

Section 117 of the Higher Education Act mandates colleges disclose foreign donations and contracts that total $250,000 or more in a year. The Education Department under Trump claimed colleges often failed to follow the law, and said this fall that an investigation unearthed more than $6.5 billion in previously undisclosed foreign money.

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