Immigration policy, a Department of Defense water reuse program and Pell Grants are among the issues the University advocated for.
USC spent at least $260,000 last year lobbying the United States House of Representatives for research, financial aid, immigration policy and other issues. The University also spent more than $490,000 lobbying the California assembly over the last three years through firms it hires to advocate for itself and its interests.
In the first quarter of 2022, USC spent $120,000 on lobbying, some of which went toward clearing immigration issues for a Ukrainian student at the Keck School of Medicine of USC. The student safely escaped Ukraine following the Russian invasion in February 2022, said Sam Garrison, the senior vice president of the University Relations office, and the University put an effort into helping her obtain a visa while she sought refuge in the United Kingdom. USC goes through a similar process for other students four to five times a year, he said.
Universities often lobby for the issuance of student visas, said Pedro Ribeiro, senior vice president for communications at the Association of American Universities — an invitation-only alliance of 71 leading research universities in the U.S. and Canada — that includes USC. That increased with Russia’s war in Ukraine, he said.
“When the war first started, there were a lot of students who were here on visas that could not return home,” Ribeiro said. “It would be unsafe for them to do so. So, AAU, along with many of our institutions, went to Congress and said, ‘You really have to help us here. These people should stay in the [U.S.]’”
The University also advocated against certain Trump administration immigration policies impacting international students and staff, Garrison said, particularly the administration’s proposed elimination of Optional Practical Training — a program that allows students to stay and work in the U.S. for one or two years after they finish their studies.
In 2021, the University reported lobbying expenditures for the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol. At the time the select committee was established, it sought expertise in national security from the country’s top universities. Garrison said those funds arranged for Erroll Southers, the associate senior vice president of safety and risk assurance at USC, to speak with the committee staff about violent extremism.
Garrison said 2020 and 2021 saw significant spikes in reported expenditures, primarily because the University actively requested funding for research efforts related to the coronavirus pandemic — such as the COVID-19 Pandemic Research Center within KSOM’s Department of Population and Public Health Sciences.
USC also regularly lobbies for Department of Defense research and appropriations. Since joining USC in 2018, Garrison said the University hasn’t advocated for any kind of military research.
Ribeiro said much of the money spent on the DoD goes toward “basic science” and health research.
“I’m not trying to sell missiles and I’m not trying to sell airplanes,” Ribeiro said. “I’m not trying to get the DoD to spend more money on a bomber or a ship.”
Despite drawing these distinctions, the AAU has, in the past, spoken out against federal spending cuts that would affect weapons contracts and basic research funding.
Some of the University’s DoD expenditures went toward advocating for the Water Reuse Consortium, a partnership between USC, the University of Arizona, the University of Nevada and several other labs and institutions. The program, Garrison said, aims to protect the Western water supply amid Southern California’s decade-long drought.
Another “key part” of the University’s advocacy, Garrison said, is its push to allocate more money to the Federal Pell Grant Program, which funds need-based grants to low-income undergraduate students. One in five students at USC are Pell Grant-eligible, he said.
Other federal financial aid programs, like the work-study program, help eligible USC students pay for college. Garrison said the spending bill House Republicans recently proposed to eliminate work-study and other grant programs is an example of the issues the University lobbies against.
Confidence in lobbyists is strained in the public sphere. In 2019, Pew Research Center found that around 53% of the public view the role of lobbyists and special interest groups as a serious problem in the U.S.
Ribeiro said this notion of lobbying is prevalent, but he said he doesn’t think lobbyists acting on behalf of universities act as conventional lobbyists.
“We don’t do any of the things that people traditionally think of as lobbying,” Ribeiro said. “I don’t write checks. I don’t have a [Political Action Committee] … We don’t have campaign events. We don’t endorse candidates.”
The University hires lobbyists to work at the House of Representatives in Washington, D.C. and at the California State Assembly in Sacramento. USC hires representatives both directly, through University Relations, and indirectly, through private firms and organizations. Their roles, Ribeiro said, are to “educate and advocate.”
While the University Relations office acts “first and foremost” as an educational resource to USC faculty, researchers, staff and students, the office also has a federal arm of lobbyists. These lobbyists work to further the University’s “academic, medical and research missions with Congress and the [Biden] Administration.”
“We also work very closely with our researchers across the University … and sometimes advocate for those really important projects that do benefit the region,” Garrison said. “We also do direct advocacy for public policies that support higher education. [We] focus on access and affordability [and] quality health care.”
USC’s federal relations office has been in Washington “for decades,” Garrison said. Last November, the University appointed government “veteran” Laurie Saroff to lead the office. Since then, no lobbying disclosures exist that outline USC’s direct spending on Capitol Hill lobbyists.
The team also works in Sacramento to lobby the California assembly, described by Garrison as performing the “same” operations.
USC has also hired various private lobbyists to perform lobbying activities on the University’s behalf. Beginning in 2020, it hired Los Angeles-based lobbying firm Holland & Knight on a $10,000 per month contract.
“We have to be able to tap into expertise on a wide range of issues,” Garrison said. “The most cost-effective way to do that is to be able to engage a firm that has broad internal expertise to supplement our staff expertise.”
Other higher education clients have also hired Holland & Knight, including the California State University system and Case Western Reserve University. On its website, the company touts its expertise in handling unions, Title IX and sexual discrimination cases, as well as its ability to advise on government rule-making and lobbying for institution-specific appropriations.
“We’re in partnership with Holland and Knight because they have an immigration practice that has deep expertise in working with the State Department,” Garrison said.
USC is also represented by the AAU. AAU members account for nearly 60% of federal funding for academic research. The association advocates for a number of issues concerning higher education, including Pell Grants and defense research funding, and is known for its robust lobbying presence on Capitol Hill.
USC’s activities on Capitol Hill place it within the top 20% of the biggest university spenders that lobbied Congress in 2022. The education sector spent a total of $93 million on lobbying last year.
This influx in USC’s spending might be explained by a period in 2008 to 2009 in which for-profit institutions tried to enlarge their profiles on Capitol Hill and dramatically increased lobbying expenditures. USC’s expenditures almost doubled — from $472,000 in 2007 to $880,000 in 2008.
Analysts at the time argued whether the spending surge indicated a more transparent industry, or if universities were simply trying to garner a greater share of federal financial aid.
2008 had ushered in fresh rules and limits by which governments could disburse aid to universities’ students, with universities like USC receiving far more in aid than they did before this time. Critics argued that higher education institutions opted to use these federal funds for lobbying campaigns to garner more taxpayer dollars.
Then, in 2011, federal lawmakers “stopped handing out earmarks to their favorite projects” and “much … changed in how higher education lobbies,” according to a 2020 Inside Higher Ed article.
As other large institutions — such as the University of California system — began ramping up their existing operations, USC seemingly joined the trend of smaller and mid-sized universities doing the opposite. The University’s expenditures dropped from a high of $940,000 in 2009 to $320,000 in 2017.
The coronavirus pandemic saw the most recent series of aforementioned increases in lobbying expenditures.
