Ken Griffin Gives Carnegie Mellon $3 Billion, the Largest Individual Gift in Higher Education History
Carnegie Mellon University Announces Historic $3B Gift from Ken Griffin
Citadel founder Ken Griffin has given Carnegie Mellon University $3 billion, the largest individual gift ever to a higher education institution. One billion dollars will strengthen the Pittsburgh campus, including $500 million for the School of Computer Science, which will be renamed for him. The remaining $2 billion launches CMU Miami, a 35-acre campus in Wynwood organized around societal challenges instead of academic majors. It aims to enroll students in 2028 and serve over 3,500 students.
CMU Miami will invert the traditional higher education model by organizing learning and inquiry around societal challenges rather than academic majors.
- diiaann
Reminds me of the Paul Graham essay on Silicon Valley. Looks like Ken decided the easiest thing was to partially move Carnegie Mellon.
"Observation bears this out: within the US, towns have become startup hubs if and only if they have both rich people and nerds. Few startups happen in Miami, for example, because although it's full of rich people, it has few nerds. It's not the kind of place nerds like."
"However, merely creating a new university would not be enough to start a silicon valley. The university is just the seed. It has to be planted in the right soil, or it won't germinate. Plant it in the wrong place, and you just create Carnegie-Mellon.
To spawn startups, your university has to be in a town that has attractions other than the university. It has to be a place where investors want to live, and students want to stay after they graduate."
- conjecTech
CMU will henceforth stand for Central Miami University
- mmooss
Academic and intellectual freedom would seem to be major questions given the size of the gift and the location:
And are they academically and intellectually free from Griffin? Can CMU itself or their Florida school do things and have programs that violate Griffin's beliefs?
And I wonder how CMU intends to handle the limits to academic freedom and other l freedoms in Florida. Maybe being a private university will insulate them? At the heart of this issue: Why is it important to Griffin to put the school in Miami, FL? There are obvious political possibilities.
Freedom isn't incidental; it's the core of what America is and it drives unprecedented innovation and prosperity, among other things.
Also, as someone else posted: How much is this a CMU campus, and how much a Griffin campus for which he paid to use the CMU name?
- 32kaht
New tech leaders is the last thing we need. What is this emphasis on leadership anyway? Are they building a NAPOLA in Florida because Pittsburgh is too woke?
- diogenescynic
Kinda sucks these always go the same universities with plenty of funding instead of a random poorly funded school for normal people.