Need Help Choosing Engineering Schools.

[boneh3ad]

@Engineer80

The affiliated universities (such as Caltech which manages Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Princeton which manages the Plasma Physics Lab, et al) are contracted by the federal agencies that own the labs (JPL for example is a NASA lab, PPL is a Department of Energy lab, etc.) to manage their day-to-day operations. The affiliated universities did not develop or build those national labs, they are just contracted managers for them.

This isn’t true. Lyman Spitzer and John Wheeler founded and built what was eventually named PPPL and Theodore von Karman and his students built JPL. That PPPL eventually became a National Laboratory and JPL an FFRDC doesn’t change the fact that the respective universities are integral to their founding, history, and operation. Students from the respective universities still work at both labs.