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$3 billion dollars from a weirdo that fled to Florida because he was too cheap to pay his taxes, establishing a school to train more weirdos like him, a thousand miles from the actual school and presumably with different curricula/professors/degrees sounds like he's just buying CMU's name for legitimacy on his experimental anti-education project.
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If anything, it could have been in Chicago but Kenny ran to Miami after spending a small fortune trying to install another puppet in the Illinois governor’s office after his previous one, Bruce Rauner, ran the state into the gutter.
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Ken played a role in bringing the UIUC CS program to Chicago which itself is a major feeder into Citadel. Citadel was one of the founding partners for City Scholars [0] along with DRW and Ocient.

[0] - https://cityscholars.grainger.illinois.edu/

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Considering that push into Chicago started with Rauner, I’m not surprised.

It was suppose to also include a large campus in the Loop but that floundered for years and was eventually cancelled when UIUC decided to instead be a partner in the new quantum computing center on the south side.

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The push into Chicago was independent of Springfield. It was almost entirely private sector driven and Pritzker's PortCos also participated.

The Quantum Exchange being in South Side occured becuase it's tied to Argonne, Fermilab, and by extension UChicago.

Once you climb high enough the ladder everyone basically has the exact same interests, especially in cities like Chicago.

It's the same way Penny (JB's sister and former Secretary of Commerce under Obama) and Ken donate oodles to Harvard because it is their undergrad alma mater (eg. Pritzker Commons, Pritzker Hall, Kenneth C. Griffin Graduate School of Arts and Sciences).

Also, Ken couldn't control Rauner given that Rauner was equally wealthy (he founded GTCR and is good friends with Carl Thoma of Thoma Bravo fame).

Pritzker and Rauner is basically two sides of the same coin where both were essentially retired but in the same circles and decided to compete because of personal ambition.

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And ditto UChicago, Griffin and the Pritzkers have both donated massive sums (Griffin Dept of Econ, Pritzker School of Medicine)
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Are we suppose to feel good that more bright students are working for deeply undemocratic and anti-human companies? I'd rather these people do something more productive than helping financiers make slightly more billions of dollars.

What a complete waste of human capacity if so.

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That is up to the students and alums of these programs. And many do non-profit and humanitarian work as well.

The world is competitive. It is what it is.

To have the power to affect change you need power.

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