The $2 Billion Bet Against the College Major

On September 30, 2026, Carnegie Mellon University announced a $3 billion gift from Citadel founder and CEO Ken Griffin, which the university describes as the largest by an individual in the history of higher education^[1]. Two-thirds of it, $2 billion, will launch CMU Miami, a campus on more than 35 acres in Miami's Wynwood neighborhood. CMU says it will turn the usual model around, building teaching and research around societal challenges instead of academic majors^[1].

The other $1 billion stays in Pittsburgh, and half of that goes to a single discipline: the School of Computer Science, which will be renamed for Griffin^[1]. So one gift places a $2 billion bet against the major and a $500 million bet on computer science, the field where CMU says it ranks No. 1 for undergraduates^[1].

What CMU has actually promised

CMU Miami will start with four grand challenge areas: human health and biological discovery; national security and strategic capabilities; energy and climate resilience; and advanced manufacturing and industrial transformation^[1]. President Farnam Jahanian said at the announcement event that the campus will not be structured around departments or majors, Pittsburgh's Public Source reported^[4]. In CMU's own account he described the aim as a university that is "more interdisciplinary, more connected to real-world problems and more focused on human impact"^[3].

Much is still open. CMU says the specific research questions will develop as faculty shape the agenda^[3]. The plan, pending regulatory approvals, is to enroll graduate students in 2028 and the first undergraduate cohort in 2032^[2]. The news release gives only 2028 for the first students^[1]. On that timetable the undergraduate version of this experiment is about six years away, and CMU's announcement, the president's letter and its explainer on the model do not say what degree titles Miami students will earn^[1][2][3].

The design also differs from two other recent large gifts that crossed disciplinary lines. Harvard's Kempner Institute, launched in December 2021 with $500 million from Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg, was set up to support 10 new faculty appointments for work joining neuroscience and artificial intelligence^[15]. Cambridge's Rokos School of Government, announced in March 2026 with a commitment of £190 million, will host PhD and master's students and draw faculty from established disciplines^[16]. Both added a cross-disciplinary unit beside existing departments. CMU proposes a campus without them.

The strong evidence is about teaching, not structure

The best evidence near this debate concerns how classes are taught. A 2014 meta-analysis in PNAS led by Scott Freeman of the University of Washington pooled 225 studies of undergraduate science, engineering and math courses. Average failure rates were 21.8 percent under active learning and 33.8 percent under traditional lecturing, and exam performance rose by 0.47 standard deviations, about 6 percent^[5]. The authors flagged a limit: the instructors who used active learning were volunteers, so gains might be smaller if every instructor had to teach this way. Only 16 of the exam-score comparisons were randomized or crossover designs, though their results matched the rest^[5].

A 2019 randomized study led by Harvard physicist Louis Deslauriers adds a warning for any campus built on students working through problems. Among 149 students in introductory physics, each of whom experienced both formats, test scores were 0.46 standard deviations higher after active sessions, yet students rated their own learning 0.56 standard deviations lower than after lectures by highly rated instructors^[6]. They learned more and felt they had learned less.

Neither study tests a curriculum organized around challenges, and there the research is thinner. A 2024 systematic review in the Journal of Engineering Education, by Karolina Doulougeri and colleagues at Eindhoven University of Technology, examined 48 empirical studies of challenge-based learning in engineering education published between 2010 and 2021^[7]. Most measured learning through students' self-reports or through deliverables and grades, few used control groups, and pre- and post-tests were rare^[7].

Interdisciplinarity pays when it is real

There is evidence that crossing disciplines has value. Sociologists led by Siqi Han and Peter Bearman built a text-based measure of interdisciplinarity from 345,569 catalog course listings and 110,421 syllabi at 80 four-year US colleges, then compared it with graduates' earnings one year after graduation^[8]. Their finding, published in PNAS in 2023, was pointed: colleges claim more interdisciplinarity in catalogs than their syllabi deliver, and only what is actually taught is associated with higher earnings^[8].

Two details matter for CMU. The link was clearest for science majors and was not statistically significant in the social sciences or the humanities and arts^[8]. And the analysis covered majors in 20 long-established disciplines. The authors say the results cannot speak to explicitly interdisciplinary fields and do not establish causation^[8]. The study supports richer majors. It does not show that removing the major helps.

What employers want, and what the pioneers kept

Employer surveys favor breadth too, and the one that asks about both wants it on top of depth, not instead of it. In the World Economic Forum's Future of Jobs Report 2025, drawing on more than 1,000 employers, analytical thinking was the most cited core skill at 69 percent. Programming was named by 17 percent^[9]. Employers expected 39 percent of workers' existing skills to be transformed or outdated between 2025 and 2030, down from 44 percent in the 2023 edition and 57 percent in 2020^[9]. By this measure, skill disruption is slowing.

An AAC&U survey of 1,010 employers in May 2023 found that more than nine in ten rated interdisciplinary study and work on real-life problems as very or somewhat important, and that employers value knowledge and skills that are both broad and deep^[10]. On average, only half judged graduates very prepared in skills such as communication, critical thinking and complex problem-solving^[10].

Colleges that have already dropped departments are instructive. Olin College of Engineering says it leaves behind departments and tenured faculty^[11]. Yet it awards three ABET-accredited degrees with familiar names: electrical and computer engineering, mechanical engineering, and engineering^[12]. ABET says it accredits programs only, not departments, colleges or institutions^[14]. The London Interdisciplinary School goes further on the credential: its undergraduate degree is a BASc in arts and sciences, subtitled interdisciplinary problems and methods^[13]. At Olin, dropping the department has proved easier than dropping the named credential.

Four risks CMU will have to manage

"Addressing complex societal challenges requires more than bringing different disciplines to the table," Theresa Mayer, CMU's vice president for research, said in the university's account^[3]. The research adds four specifics.

• Assessment. Teachers in the reviewed studies struggled to capture each student's discipline-specific learning when work was done in multidisciplinary teams^[7].
• Depth. Students in the early years of a bachelor's degree, without solid disciplinary knowledge, found open-ended challenges hard^[7]. CMU's own release cites a No. 3 national ranking for graduate earnings by academic major^[1].
• Cost. One study in the review put preparing and running a challenge-based course at about 60 percent more teacher time than a case-based one^[7].
• Recognition. Specialized accreditors such as ABET accredit individual programs^[14], and CMU's timeline depends on regulatory approvals^[2].

The WAC view

The evidence backs CMU's instinct about how students should learn and is largely silent on whether majors should go. The more defensible reading is that challenges work best layered on disciplinary foundations, with individual assessment and comparison groups built in from the first cohort. On its own timetable, CMU has about six years before Miami undergraduates arrive^[2]. The most useful thing it could publish in that time is what those students will be expected to know, how it will be measured, and against whom.

What to do with this

The events behind this article, in WAC News

• Carnegie Mellon announces $3 billion gift and plans for a new Miami campusSeptember 30, 2026
• Harvard launches Kempner Institute for intelligence research with $500 million giftDecember 7, 2021
• Cambridge to establish Rokos School of Government with £190 million commitmentMarch 31, 2026

Sources

1. Carnegie Mellon University Announces Historic $3 Billion Gift from Ken Griffin, Pioneering a New Model for Higher Education. Carnegie Mellon University News, September 30, 2026.
2. Announcing a Historic Investment in Carnegie Mellon. Carnegie Mellon University, Office of the President, September 30, 2026.
3. Higher Education Gets a New Model: CMU Miami. Carnegie Mellon University News, September 30, 2026.
4. CMU got a record $3 billion donation toward a new campus. What does that mean for Pittsburgh?. Pittsburgh's Public Source, September 30, 2026.
5. Freeman et al., Active learning increases student performance in science, engineering, and mathematics. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (via PubMed Central), 2014.
6. Deslauriers et al., Measuring actual learning versus feeling of learning in response to being actively engaged in the classroom. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (via PubMed Central), September 4, 2019.
7. Doulougeri et al., Challenge-based learning implementation in engineering education: A systematic literature review. Journal of Engineering Education (Eindhoven University of Technology repository copy), 2024.
8. Han et al., Interdisciplinary college curriculum and its labor market implications. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (via PubMed Central), October 16, 2023.
9. Future of Jobs Report 2025. World Economic Forum, January 2025.
10. The Career-Ready Graduate: What Employers Say about the Difference College Makes. American Association of Colleges and Universities, 2023.
11. About Olin. Olin College of Engineering, 2026.
12. Majors + Concentrations. Olin College of Engineering, 2026.
13. BASc Undergraduate Degree. London Interdisciplinary School, 2026.
14. What Is Accreditation?. ABET, 2026.
15. New University-wide institute to integrate natural, artificial intelligence. The Harvard Gazette, December 7, 2021.
16. Cambridge to establish Rokos School of Government. University of Cambridge, March 31, 2026.

Written by the WAC editorial team. Facts are drawn from the numbered sources above and were checked against them before publication; opinions appear only under “The WAC view”. The organisations and people named are not affiliated with the World Assessment Council unless stated. Send a correction