There are numerous granting agencies. Some schools do get funding from private sources, but most are via government grants. This has been how science has operated since WWII. To the best of my knowledge the largest granting agency for science is the National Institutes of Health. By and large they fund biomedical research. That type of work is far more expensive, and gets more funding than other fields, such as agriculture and engineering. Virginia Tech does get a lot of grant money, but compared to schools with a hospital and large medical school they lag behind. Duke and UNC are two of the largest in the US and dwarf what VT brings in. I have never worked with any of the B1G schools but I have seen figures before for a few of them. To grow research revenue you need to bring in professors with large grant budgets and enhance facilities. It’s an “arms race” that all large schools are fighting. VT’s research standing is somewhat comparable to how we’ve embeem in football over the last 10 years. University research is not corrupt. There are a few cases of people falsifying data, but that ends a career and is they anre extremely small outliers. I can honestly only think of two cases in the south east of note in the last 25 years. Basic research at a university is not done the way it would be at a private business and so in some ways it may be less efficient BUT it also allows people to address questions that would not otherwise be answered. Additionally some of those questions lead to business ventures that are critical to a specific sector of our economy. Plus a lot of the work done at universities is used by business who cannot justify spending they money on projects but use the answers to fuel commercial development. That answer was somewhat rambling but if you have any follow up let me know.