Carnegie Mellon tops list of U.S. universities pulling in foreign cash

What a difference a generation and a billion dollars or so can make.

Four decades ago, when economist Robert Strauss landed at Carnegie Mellon University, the Pittsburgh school Andrew Carnegie launched as a training center for the children of mill workers in 1900 was a small, well-regarded private research university.

Its status has grown exponentially since then, Strauss said.

Today, with nearly 16,000 students, about three times its 1980 enrollment, Carnegie Mellon is a powerhouse that arguably wields more clout on the global stage than any of the nation’s vaunted Ivy League schools.

University officials are hesitant to talk about it, but federal reports show Carnegie Mellon pulled in more in foreign investment — nearly $1.5 billion in contracts and contributions between 2013 and 2019 — than any university in the U.S.

“That’s a great statistic, and it’s wonderful to know. Carnegie Mellon has been building that reputation. It has earned it and it is consistent,” said Gail Shrott, executive director of Global Pittsburgh.

Shrott, who assists the U.S. State Department with foreign visitors to Pittsburgh, said CMU’s prowess in the world of cybersecurity is known in embassies around the world.

“If there is a cybersecurity group visiting the U.S., Pittsburgh is one of the first cities contacted because Carnegie Mellon’s programming is known around the world,” Shrott said.

That’s not surprising given that international students — the bulk of whom come from China and India — account for about 43% of Carnegie Mellon’s enrollment and often return home with tales of their American alma mater.

Carnegie Mellon’s international cash flow is detailed in reports it and other U.S. universities are required to report when foreign contracts and gifts exceed $250,000.

Those reports have come under scrutiny in Congress amid concerns about foreign influence on college campuses and the theft of intellectual property and research.

In February, the federal government launched investigations into possible under­reporting at Harvard and Yale.

Those probes follow the federal indictment last month of Charles Lieber, chair of Harvard’s Chemistry and Chemical Biology Department. He was charged with lying about his involvement with the Chinese government’s Thousand Talents Plan and a contract he inked with a Chinese university reportedly worth in excess of $1 million.

“This is about transparency. If colleges and universities are accepting foreign money and gifts, their students, donors and taxpayers deserve to know how much and from whom. Moreover, it’s what the law requires,” U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos said in a statement announcing the investigations.

Carnegie Mellon was among 10 universities that disclosed $3.6 billion in previously unreported foreign contracts and contributions following a crackdown on underreporting last summer, the Department of Education said. Others in that group included Cornell, Yale, the University of Colorado Boulder, the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Chicago, the University of Pennsylvania, Boston University and Texas A&M.

A department spokesman said Carnegie Mellon is not among the universities under investigation for violations of reporting requirements.

That could be because the university takes its reporting requirements seriously, said Carnegie Mellon spokeswoman Julie Mattera.

“As an international research university, Carnegie Mellon has long had collaborations with institutions based around the world. Further, Carnegie Mellon operates the following three international branch campuses: in Doha, Qatar, since 2004, in Adelaide, Australia, since 2006, and in Kigali, Rwanda, since 2011. Amounts received from the Qatar Foundation for Education and from the government of Rwanda are used principally to run our campuses and educate students in those respective countries,” Mattera said.

Such arrangements account for about half of the university’s foreign cash flow.

About $250 million of that flowed directly to CMU after the university paid its lawyers and the university researchers who developed the technology, then-university president Subra Suresh said.

But records show some $52.7 million also came in the form of outright gifts— $16.6 million from donors in India; $10.7 million from Canada; $5.4 million from Qatar; and $4.75 million from China, among others.

While that may be small change at Carnegie Mellon, it’s more than any of Pennsylvania’s public research universities reported in total foreign investment during the period. Reports show Penn State with $28.3 million in foreign contracts and gifts, Pitt with $46.6 million and Temple with $42.4 million during that same period.