The U.S. Department of Education’s new public dashboard tracking foreign gifts and contracts to colleges is drawing scrutiny over how the data is presented and interpreted. Under Section 117, institutions must disclose contracts and donations from foreign countries above $250,000, and the portal aggregates reported activity for public viewing. Reporting notes that, as of May, 559 colleges and universities had received more than $72 billion in gifts and contracts in disclosures covering multiple years, with leading sources including Qatar and China. Higher-education experts say the dashboard can be misleading because it does not clearly show the time periods covered and cannot easily be sorted by year. Advocates argue the portal supports compliance transparency, while others warn it could be used for political narratives that lack context about purpose, timing, and institutional agreements. The Education Department did not fully address the concerns about missing context in response to questions cited in the reporting.