Capital Flow Watch

Columbia University in the City of New York (commonly known as Columbia University, or simply Columbia) is a private university in the United States and a member of the Ivy League. Columbia’s main campus lies in the Morningside Heights neighborhood in the borough of Manhattan, in New York City. It was founded in 1754 as King’s College by royal charter of George II of Great Britain, and is one of only two United States universities to have been founded under such authority. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, and is the 5th oldest in the United States —making it one of the country’s nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution. After the American Revolutionary War, it was briefly chartered as a state entity from 1784–1787. The university now operates under a 1787 charter that places the institution under a private board of trustees.
Columbia annually awards the Pulitzer Prizes and is one of the founding members of the Association of American Universities. More Nobel Prize winners (both alumni and faculty) have been affiliated with Columbia than with any other institution in the world. Notable alumni and affiliates include 4 Founding Fathers of the United States, 4 United States Presidents, 9 Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States, 97 Pulitzer Prize winners, 93 Nobel Prize winners, and at least 20 Academy Award winners. Columbia’s endowment and annual research expenditures are among the largest of any American university. The university currently has two global centers in Amman, Jordan and Beijing, China with plans to establish two additional centers in France and India. (Wikipedia Jan 2010)