Thank you so much, and I want to welcome everyone from Bloomberg Television and Bloomberg Radio. I am here in Pittsburgh at Carnegie Mellon University with Ken Griffin, the founder of Citadel, along with the president of CMU, Farnam Jahanian, who joins us here after this record $3,000,000,000 donation — investment — in CMU. Ken, I want to start with you. How did you choose CMU, and why did you decide to make your biggest ever investment, doubling your total investments in terms of a gift in CMU?
So you picked the right choice of words. This is an investment in excellence. Carnegie Mellon University leads the nation in computer science, in artificial intelligence, in cybersecurity, a world-renowned program in robotics. This is a university that represents the future of our country, and it is a privilege to support the incredible momentum here at Carnegie Mellon University, the team here at Carnegie Mellon, and the unbelievable faculty and students.
President Jahanian, in the press release, you talk about this new campus that you're creating in Miami. A significant part of this $3,000,000,000 is going to go there, pioneering a new model for higher education. What does that look like? What is this going to be?
Well, first of all, it's good to be with you. You know, CMU — when you think about our history, Carnegie Mellon was founded by Andrew Carnegie in the early 1900s to serve the sons and daughters of the working class, and this has been in our DNA all along. Whenever there are massive societal and technological changes, CMU steps up. We make big bold bets, and this is one of those. I think, given the changes that we see in technology, the advances we see in AI, there's no question that every sector of our economy is being transformed. There's no question that scientific discovery is being accelerated. As a result of that, our national security, our economic competitiveness depends on how we educate the next generation, how we prepare them, and so how we accelerate discovery and the impact that we have.
So, Ken, you know, everyone has a story about knowing someone whose kid just graduated from college, spent $500,000 — maybe liberal arts, maybe even something more concrete — can't get a job, has to pay back this debt, doesn't know how. Where are we going wrong, right? What kinds of skills are not being taught currently at the university, as a major employer that you see?
Well, let me first talk about where things are going right. U.S. News will report, updated their ranking system to include how students are doing several years post-graduation. And that ranking placed Carnegie Mellon University number three in the country on return on investment on the college education, propelling CMU to number 14 overall in the United States as one of the greatest institutions of higher learning in our country. We need to learn from our success stories and play to our success stories rather than whine about the universities that aren't delivering value for their students. My investment here, as I said earlier, is an investment in excellence.
To me, excellence is creating the students that will lead our country in the future. They'll solve our important problems. They will build big things, and they will do so with urgency. And if you look at the economic prospects of the students who graduate from CMU, they are outstanding. This is what a university should deliver. And I hope that this gift catalyzes discussions across the country in the boards of trustees and in the C-suites of colleges and universities to focus on what best practices do we need to bring into our four walls that we see at a Carnegie Mellon, that we see at an MIT, that we see at a Stanford, that will drive the success of our students and the prosperity of our country.
So let me build on that. You asked earlier what this new model for education is going to look like. We're not thinking in terms of departments, colleges, and schools. We're really thinking about grand challenges, big societal issues, opportunities as Ken likes to call them — like human health, national security, cybersecurity, innovation, energy, and climate resiliency. Organizing the campus around those, bringing our learning and research to bear, not in the context of disciplinary silos, but bringing people together to address these grand challenges. This is really the vision for the future.
And when you ask about what do we teach our students, we need to teach them foundation — there's no question — but we also need to teach them inherent human skills, critical thinking, problem solving. These students are going to go out there and change the world. They need to be able to essentially not only have knowledge and skills that are technical and scientific, but also the human skills that are going to serve them well as we shape the future.
And I think if you look out the window here at Pittsburgh, one of the great industrial success stories of America. The renaissance of Pittsburgh is being created here at Carnegie Mellon University. There are 100 different robotics companies here in Pittsburgh, leading the way for the reindustrialization of the United States of America. And that's being driven by the students and faculty and resources of Carnegie Mellon University.
So this is your biggest gift ever, $3,000,000,000. It's a massive sum. It breaks all records when it comes to a single gift to a single institution. You're focused also on building out the Miami branch, and you're talking about your efforts to try to create Miami as a world-class city with a pipeline of talent. Is this going to be your focus? I mean, is there more to come with this, or is it really CMU that you're putting your kind of focus on to try to see what kind of results you can get?
I'd like to think that I have decades ahead of me to explore that question more fully, but this gift — the magnitude of this gift represents the magnitude of the aspiration. I truly believe that just as Carnegie Mellon University is transforming Pittsburgh, a renaissance for the 20th century, that CMU Miami will transform Miami, bringing to Miami hundreds of technology companies, startups, career opportunities, and futures that impact both the people of Miami and the greater prosperity of our nation.
I just wonder if this means that going forward, the new model of education needs to be something a little bit more technically driven with respect to skills that are applicable in the real world, whether it's sort of the classic concept of the Ivy League well-rounded human doesn't have a place for $500,000 or $400,000 in the world that we live in today.
We need a well-rounded human more than ever before. Think about advances in technology. Think about the impact of that on society. We need to train engineers and scientists who understand the implications of those advances, the implications of that on society, on communities, and be able to navigate it. So in fact, I think not only do we need to give them technical knowledge, scientific knowledge, we also need to give them — as I mentioned — problem-solving skills, communication skills, ethical applications of the technologies that they develop. All of that goes into it. And this is in fact part of the reason when we talk about these grand societal challenge areas, we want to bring an interdisciplinary group of people to work together, and this is really the wave of the future.
Ken, you had some pretty...
I actually think that point is really important. I had the benefit of a liberal arts degree and a strong background in computer science. It's been defining to my life. Carnegie Mellon has an incredible history in the humanities. There are 70 Tony Award winners from Carnegie Mellon's alumni.
