CMU leads in Trump's new foreign funding data

• More than half of that went to just four schools: Carnegie Mellon (just under $1 billion), MIT, Stanford University and Harvard University.
• The largest foreign sources of funding came from Qatar (over $1.1 billion), the United Kingdom (over $633 million) and Switzerland (over $451 million).
• The data is now available via an online portal.

Context: For more than 30 years, the government has collected data on foreign ties to U.S. colleges, though enforcement has been uneven.

By the numbers: Between 1986 and 2025, Carnegie Mellon reported $3.9 billion in foreign funding — the second-highest total among 555 institutions reporting to the U.S. Department of Education, per federal data.

• More than half — $2 billion — came from Qatar, which funds a government-backed education initiative that hosts several U.S. universities, including Carnegie Mellon.
• American universities reported a total of $67.6 billion in foreign funding during that period.

What they're saying: "Carnegie Mellon has operated a campus in Qatar for more than two decades in alignment with our academic mission and in full compliance with all applicable U.S. laws," said CMU spokesperson Chuck Carney in a statement to Axios.

• "The costs of operating the CMU-Q campus are underwritten by the Qatar Foundation, pursuant to agreed-upon annual budgets, which are reported each year to the Department of Education, as required by law."
• More than 90% of the funds are spent in Qatar to operate that campus, he said.

Catch up quick: Trump issued an executive order last year enforcing Section 117 of the Higher Education Act, which requires colleges and universities to report significant sources of foreign funding.

• Trump said his administration sought to "protect the marketplace of ideas from propaganda sponsored by foreign governments, and safeguard America's students and research from foreign exploitation."

Friction point: Some critics say that Qatar and other foreign entities use partnerships with American schools to expand their influence in the United States. One lawsuit filed by a former CMU student recently challenged the school's ties to Qatar.

The other side: Characterizing all foreign funding as a threat to national security is misleading, says Alexander Cooley, a political scientist researching foreign authoritarian influence.

• The country of origin "does not necessarily reflect the actual provenance of the individual or entity that's giving," he says. "And on the flip side, donations from foreign individuals channelled through shell companies are not classified as foreign donations."

The reporting requirements also "collapse a lot of different kind of activities," he says.

• Those activities include tuition reimbursements and scholarships for foreign students, he says, as well as contracts for "joint campuses and satellite campuses" abroad.

Zoom in: Foreign donations should be scrutinized like domestic ones, Cooley says, adding that he thinks transparency is generally a good idea for both.

Between the lines: The Trump administration's grilling of schools stands in contrast to its softening of scrutiny elsewhere, such as lobbyists for foreign governments, Cooley says.

The bottom line: "I don't think the insight that money changes things is wrong. It happens in all sectors," Cooley says.

• "We just have to be really precise about what the channels of influence are and what we're trying to stop, as opposed to this guilt by association dynamic we have."