Latitudes

Far-reaching investigations of colleges’ foreign ties could be closed

The U.S. Department of Education made headlines under the Trump administration when it opened a number of far-reaching investigations of foreign gifts and contracts to prominent American research universities. The institutions may not have fully disclosed funds coming from Chinese and other overseas entities as required under federal law, the Education Department said at the time.

Now the department has told higher-education groups that it plans to shut down the foreign-funds inquiries that remain open, another sign of how the Biden administration has moved to ratchet down the intense scrutiny of colleges’ international ties, particularly with China, begun under President Donald J. Trump.

In an August letter to Education Department officials posted online, Terry Hartle, senior vice president for government relations at the American Council on Education, writes that higher-education leaders had been “pleased to learn that [the department] plans to close the outstanding Section 117 investigations that remain open.” (Section 117 refers to the provision of the Higher Education Act that governs foreign-funds reporting.)

Government officials met with higher-education representatives in June, and several people who attended the meeting confirmed that officials had said the investigations would be closed, although no timeline was given. In an email to The Chronicle, an Education Department spokesman said it is the federal agency’s policy not to comment on open investigations. “The department is committed to working with institutions of higher education to help them understand and comply with the reporting requirements of Section 117,” he added.

Between 2019 and 2021, the Trump administration opened investigations into 19 institutions, including Harvard, Yale, and Stanford universities and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Of those investigations, four are marked as closed by the Department of Education.

Under President Trump, government officials repeatedly warned of the dangers of foreign influence on college campuses. “What more bad decisions will schools make because they are hooked on Chinese Communist Party cash?” said Michael Pompeo, then-secretary of state, in a December 2020 speech at Georgia Tech.

The Biden administration has taken a less adversarial approach. In February, the U.S. Department of Justice announced it was shutting down the China Initiative, its controversial investigation of academic and economic espionage with China.

That does not mean that scrutiny of colleges’ collaborations with China and other countries will end, however. Officials have been working on new research-security guidelines that more clearly dictate what scientists must disclose and that are consistent across the federal government. They could also reconsider what research is considered classified and cannot be shared with overseas partners.

And members of Congress, on both sides of the aisle, have shown an appetite to regulate and restrict higher education’s foreign ties. They have barred colleges that host Confucius Institutes, Chinese-sponsored language and cultural centers, from getting U.S. Department of Defense funding, toughened foreign-funds disclosures to the National Science Foundation, and prohibited researchers with federal grants from participating in foreign talent-recruitment programs, among other legislative proposals.

Appeals court strikes down challenge to program for international students

A federal appeals court has rejected a long-running legal challenge by a technology-workers group to Optional Practical Training, a popular work program for international graduates of American colleges.

The Washington Alliance of Technology Workers had sued to end the program, which is known as OPT, saying that the executive branch lacked the authority to establish or expand it. The tech-workers group has fought OPT in court for the past decade, challenging both the establishment of the program and an expansion of its benefits for science and technology majors under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama.

But in a two-to-one decision, the U.S. appeals court in Washington, D.C., ruled on Tuesday that the 30-year-old program is legal. ”Lawmakers have closely scrutinized the immigration laws many times since then,” the judges wrote. “Congress has repeatedly amended the pertinent provisions. But it has never once questioned the statutory support for the Optional Practical Training program.”

Under OPT, recent international graduates can remain in the United States on their student visas for up to a year while working. International graduates in STEM fields are permitted to stay for as long as three years. The Biden administration announced in January that it was expanding the list of majors that qualify for the STEM extension.

In the 2020-21 academic year, nearly three in 10 student-visa holders in the United States were working on OPT, not studying.

A college leader issues a refugee challenge

The president of a tuition-free online university is challenging other college leaders to enroll more refugee students.

If every college around the world would take in just 15 refugee students, it would make a major dent in the refugee-education crisis, Shai Reshef, president and founder of the University of the People, said in a speech at an international conference on refugees and migrants last week.

Currently, just five percent of college-age refugees attend college, but the United Nations has set a goal of enrolling 15 percent of the world’s 3.3 million refugees who are in that age group by 2030. Instability and unrest, war and natural disasters have disrupted the education of young people from Afghanistan, Ukraine, Haiti, and many other parts of the world. But Reshef said the UN target could be reached if every institution took in just a handful of refugee students.

The University of the People, which is American accredited, currently has 16,500 refugees enrolled in its courses and has pledged to enroll 25,000 by 2030.

“Sympathizing with refugees and talking about the crisis is not enough anymore,” Reshef said. “The world’s 31,000 universities need to go beyond words and take action to resolve this issue themselves.”

Related: A new scholarship program will sponsor 250 displaced Afghan students at American colleges, half of whom will be women.

Around the globe

An amendment to a defense-authorization bill that Congress will consider later this year would exempt international graduates of American colleges who earn advanced degrees in STEM fields from green-card limits. A similar provision failed to win approval in July on technical grounds.

Chinese students at George Washington University are speaking out anonymously about their fears of censorship and surveillance. I’ve written previously about concerns that repressive governments can curtail speech, even on American campuses.

Three U.S. federal agencies gave nearly $30 million over six years to Chinese universities and research centers to support international research collaboration, a report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office found.

A bombing in Kabul killed 19 students, most of them women and girls, who were preparing for a college-entrance exam.

Iranian security forces clashed with student protestors at a prominent university in Tehran.

The British government will conduct a review of the number of dependent family members who come to the country with international students, following a sharp increase in the number of dependent relatives in the last year.

Two-thirds of British college students said their universities did a good job of protecting free speech on campus.

The majority of international students who drop out of college in South Korea stay in the country despite not having a valid visa, according to an analysis of government data.

Universities in Beijing have cut short a weeklong holiday and put restrictions on students because of the Chinese Communist Party’s National Congress.

A jury convicted a former graduate student from China of spying for the Chinese government.

A Chinese billionaire has settled a lawsuit brought against him by an international student at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities who accused him of rape.

Almost half of adults between 25 and 34 years old around the globe now have a postsecondary degree or credential, a record high, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.

And finally …

To help a group of Brazilian students vote, staff members of the international office at Grinnell College, in Iowa, drove them the nearly 600-mile round trip to Brazil’s consulate in Chicago to cast their ballots.

In an email, Carolina Klauck Novaes, a senior at the liberal-arts college, said voting is mandatory in Brazil, but that she had another incentive to make sure her vote counted: There are concerns that the country’s current president, Jair Bolsonaro, who has drawn comparisons to Donald Trump, might try to invalidate the results if he loses. “Brazil has already gone through two dictatorships,” she wrote. “It is an important election for Brazil and the world.”

Thanks for reading. I always welcome your feedback and ideas for future reporting, so drop me a line, at karin.fischer@chronicle.com. You can also connect with me on Twitter or LinkedIn. If you like this newsletter, please share it with colleagues and friends. They can sign up here.