DETERRENT Act Passes House Education Committee

The House Committee on Education & Workforce marked up a series of bills this week. Of particular importance to higher education was the mark up of the Defending Education Transparency and Ending Rogue Regimes Engaging in Nefarious Transactions Act (H.R. 1048), also known as the DETERRENT Act.

Reintroduced this year by Rep. Michael Baumgartner (R-WA), the bill revives the legislation passed by the House in the last Congress that reforms Section 117 of the Higher Education Act regarding institutional reporting on foreign gifts. While the bill passed previously with bipartisan support, this week’s committee vote was along party lines.

During the mark up, Republicans stressed the sunlight on foreign influence on college campuses and berated “elite institutions for accepting payments from geopolitical adversaries.” Democrats, on the other hand, took the opportunity to call out the Trump Administration’s actions regarding the freezing of federal funds, particularly the National Institutes of Health funding cuts, and to criticize Republicans for calling for the dismantling of the Department of Education while considering a bill to give it more authority.

NAICU joined the higher education community in sending a letter to Committee Chair Tim Walberg (R-MI) and Ranking Member Bobby Scott (D-VA) in offering feedback on specific provisions of the bill. Specifically, the letter highlighted that the bill, as “currently proposed, would add significant impediments to conducting critical research activities, duplicate existing interagency efforts, and put in place a problematic expansion of data collection by the U.S. Department of Education without ensuring these requirements address actual national security or foreign malign influence threats.”

For more information, please contact:
Stephanie Giesecke