Johns Hopkins is one of the best-funded research universities in the world.
We already knew that Hopkins receives far more federal funds for research than any other university in the country — nearly $2 billion last year. But a new international list, the Times Higher Education World University Ranking, makes it clear just how much the university receives from private industry as well — nearly $250,000 per professor, with the majority of industry funds coming from the pharmaceutical industry. That makes Hopkins the fourth best-funded university in the world, when it comes to private industry donations. (In the U.S., it’s in second place, behind Duke.)
Interestingly enough, last year some Johns Hopkins profs published a study that criticized the over-reliance on private industry funding. “When I am doing a government-funded trial comparing two treatments, I start with the assumption that both treatments are equal. I don’t have a vested financial interest in the outcome,” study author Stephan Ehrhardt, an epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, told the Hopkins Hub. “But when I am a drug company testing my new product, my objectivity can be compromised by the company’s bottom line since it costs me millions of dollars to develop and test my product to get it on the market. It might be difficult for me to be completely objective. The stakes are very high.”
