It's not a bad school by any stretch, but it's not on the same level. Looking at federal grant money (e.g. NSF, reasonable metric for research), U Pitt is at 26 million to CMU's 70 million. Penn is a much closer match at 48 million. Berkeley and Stanford are at 112 and 78 million, for comparison.
You can make 'world class' mean whatever you'd like, but I think most would consider Pitt a solid state-level school, whereas CMU is more competitive nationally.
I'm definitely not saying it doesn't matter, but it's not as significant as CMU, and PG's argument seems to be that you benefit from having a really apex research institution for making a startup scene.
You can make 'world class' mean whatever you'd like, but I think most would consider Pitt a solid state-level school, whereas CMU is more competitive nationally.
http://dellweb.bfa.nsf.gov/awdlst2/default.asp
I'm definitely not saying it doesn't matter, but it's not as significant as CMU, and PG's argument seems to be that you benefit from having a really apex research institution for making a startup scene.