Assistance program
Academic Exchange Programs - Undergraduate Programs
$385.0 Million committed in FY2018–FY2026
- Agency
- Bureau of Educational and Cultural, State, Department of
- Assistance
- Cooperative Agreements
- CFDA number
- 19.009
- What it does
- As authorized by the Fulbright-Hays Act, the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA) seeks to increase mutual understanding between the people of the United States and the people of other countries by means of educational and cultural exchange programs, including the exchange of scholars, researchers, professionals, students, and educators. ECA programs foster engagement and encourage dialogue with citizens around the world. Educational and cultural engagement is premised on the knowledge that mutual understanding, the development of future leaders, and the benefits of education programs serve to influence societies and affect official decision-making almost everywhere in the world today. ECA programs inform, engage, and influence participants across strategic sectors of society – including young people, women, teachers, scholars, journalists, and other professionals – increasing the number of foreign individuals who have first-hand experience with Americans and with the values of freedom, representative government, rule of law, economic choice, and individual dignity, while building international knowledge and capacity among Americans. The purpose of Undergraduate Programs is to provide targeted support for American students to pursue intensive language study abroad and to expand the opportunities available for American students via study abroad programming as well as to provide foreign students with opportunities to gain a better understanding of the United States, while developing new generations of world leaders. Undergraduate programs include the Global Undergraduate Exchange Program (Global UGRAD); Study of the U.S. Institutes for Student Leaders (SUSI); Community College Initiative (CCI) Program ; the Critical Language Scholarship (CLS) Program; and the Increase and Diversify Education Abroad for U.S. Students (IDEAS) Program.
- Who benefits
- Beneficiaries include recipient organizations, educational institutions, other non-government organizations (NGOs) that meet the provisions described in Internal Revenue Code section 26 USC 501(c)(3), as well as sponsored participants, and the American people and the people of participating countries who interact with the international participants.
Committed by fiscal year
* FY2026 is year-to-date — the fiscal year is still in progress, so its total is still filling in. The striped band and dashed line mark that provisional stretch.
How the money flows
Committed dollars by how this program's money is paid out.
Grants
$384.0M
100%
Other
$1.0M
<1%
Top recipients
By dollars committed.
How to read these numbers
- Committed through this program
Money committed under this assistance listing (its CFDA program), counted in the year each action happened.
- How it's paid
Most programs pay out one way — a grant, or a direct payment to individuals; the flow bar only appears when a program genuinely mixes types.
- Some recipients aren't itemized
For entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare, the government reports one aggregate instead of naming tens of millions of people, so the recipient roster isn't part of the public record.
- Awards, counted once
An award count is the number of distinct awards with at least one action that year — each counted once, however many times it was amended.
- The colored bars
Every bar on this page splits by how the money moves:
Direct payments