KEN GRIFFIN DONATES $3BN TO CARNEGIE MELLON UNIVERSITY

Carnegie Mellon University announced on Wednesday that hedge fund chief executive Ken Griffin is donating $3 billion to the institution. The Pittsburgh-based private research university said it is the largest single gift ever made to a US university. The donation includes $2 billion for a new 35-acre campus in Miami's Wynwood neighbourhood, just north of the city's downtown. The university said the campus is expected to enrol about 3,500 undergraduate, master's and doctoral students. Construction is scheduled to begin next year.

According to the university, the campus will be organised around what it called "grand challenge areas" rather than traditional academic majors. These include human health, national security, energy and climate resilience, and advanced manufacturing, the university said. The rest of Griffin's gift will be split evenly between Carnegie Mellon's computer science programme, which will be renamed after him, and other unspecified projects on the Pittsburgh campus. Other major university donations include $1.8 billion from former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg to Johns Hopkins University in 2018, and $2 billion from Nike co-founder Phil Knight and his wife, Penny Knight, to Oregon Health & Science University in 2025. Carnegie Mellon's president, Farnam Jahanian, said in a statement that the university has a history of responding to periods of technological change with new approaches to education.

Jahanian said artificial intelligence is one of the defining developments of the era and requires the university to rethink how it educates and conducts research. The gift comes as universities face pressure to prepare students for a workforce being reshaped by artificial intelligence, amid separate reports that postings requiring AI and machine learning skills are rising rapidly. Carnegie Mellon said this expansion is taking place amid mounting financial pressures across higher education. The Miami campus is intended to serve thousands of students once construction is complete.