Elon Musk has plans to open a new university in Texas, according to tax filings.
Bloomberg reported the filings show Musk donated $100m to his charity, The Foundation, to establish a primary and secondary Stem school in Austin – and later to seek accreditation from the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges for launching a university.
The Foundation said the curriculum for the school and university would “combine formal instruction by experienced faculty in subjects such as mathematics, science, engineering and physics, alongside hands-on learning experience including simulations, case studies, fabrication/design projects, and labs”.
The school initially aims to enroll 50 students, admitted based on merit.
“The school does not want the inability to pay tuition or fees to be a barrier for students. Thus, if a student is admitted to the school, tuition and financial support will be provided to the extent of available resources,” the tax filing says.
It adds that the school will primarily be funded through donations and tuition fees.
In a 2015 interview in Beijing, Musk revealed he enrolled his five children in Ad Astra, now called Astra Nova, another non-profit experimental school that he founded in Hawthorne, California, on the campus of his company SpaceX.
Musk moved to Texas in 2020 after criticizing California’s Silicon Valley and the San Francisco Bay Area for having an “outsized influence in the world”. In 2021 he moved Tesla headquarters from Palo Alto, California, to Austin, Texas, and SpaceX also has a large testing facility in McGregor, Texas.
Musk has attracted criticism for allegedly championing antisemitic views. This week he welcomed the notorious conspiracy theorist Alex Jones – banned in 2018 for abusive behavior and fined for spreading slanderous lies about the Sandy Hook shootings – back to X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter that Musk bought and immediately rid of most of its team for moderating hate speech. Musk welcomed Jones back in a Twitter Spaces conversation also featuring the avowed misogynist Andrew Tate and several far-right politicians.
Austin, an otherwise liberal city in a mostly conservative state, is already home to one of the state’s public universities, the University of Texas.
It now also hosts a private liberal arts college founded by the rightwing journalist Bari Weiss, who resigned as an opinion writer for the New York Times after she alleged her complaints of workplace bullying were ignored. The college, called the University of Austin or UATX, was founded on the principles of “free thought” and as an alternative to “the rise of illiberalism”.
In October 2023, the Texas higher education coordinating board designated the college as a degree-granting institution. It is now accepting applicants to its first undergraduate class, which will begin in the fall of 2024.
