As I’ve written many times, each time with less sarcasm, it’s fast becoming time to bulldoze the universities. The decades-long assault of the Long March through the Institutions has turned universities into unsalvageable and corrupt Marxist re-education camps.
Still, actually taking a D9 to every rotten edifice of woke indoctrination is no doubt too radical a step. At least for now. So, a group of wealthy folk are doing the next best thing: building their own universities.
To do what universities are supposed to do.
Billionaires frustrated with elite colleges are banding behind a fledgling school in Texas that boasts 92 students.
Trader Jeff Yass, real-estate developer Harlan Crow and investor Len Blavatnik are among the high-profile people donating to the University of Austin, or UATX. The new school has raised roughly (AU$297 million) $200 million so far – including (AU$52 million) $35 million from Yass – a huge sum for a tiny school without any alumni to tap.
It’s a small beginning, but these are successful people on a mission.
Frustration with the state of debate and levels of unrest at prestigious universities has spurred some of the richest Americans to flex their financial muscle.
Some are trying to reform the seemingly un-reformable by attempting a cleanout of the existing institutions.
Billionaires like Marc Rowan and Bill Ackman led campaigns to oust Ivy League presidents they viewed as being too soft on antisemitism on campus following Hamas’s Oct 7 attacks on Israel and the war in Gaza. Many wealthy donors believe elite colleges are overwhelmingly progressive – and are attracted to the idea of an alternative school that says it encourages meritocratic achievement and myriad viewpoints.
Others are just saying, ‘the hell with that’, and starting again from scratch.Enter UATX, which welcomed its initial class of first-years last month in a former department store near the Texas Capitol. The school says it is nonpartisan and refers to its mission as the “fearless pursuit of truth.” Its foundational curriculum marries classical texts – students were given a copy of Homer’s Odyssey upon enrollment – with an emphasis on entrepreneurship.
A video posted to the school’s YouTube page contrasts scenes of pro-Palestinian protests and encampments at other schools with a civil UATX seminar. The video ends with the message, “They burn, we build.” Officials talk about UATX in lofty terms. Some cite the University of Chicago as an aspirational role model. President Pano Kanelos called students and faculty “pioneers” and “heroes” in his convocation address. “What is truly historic is that which sends the trajectory of history, and lives lived within the stream of history, shooting in a direction other than that towards which they were tending,” Kanelos said.
Some big names are involved: venture capitalists like Joe Lonsdale and PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel, journalist Bari Weiss and more.
Daniel Lubetzky, founder of snack-bar maker Kind Snacks and a son of a Holocaust survivor, donated early on and continued to give after the attacks. He became increasingly alarmed at the rise of “us vs. them” thinking on campuses. Active discussions are ongoing with others, including Ackman, who was harshly critical of elite colleges’ diversity, equity and inclusion efforts and their handling of antisemitism on campus.
“It took what happened in the wake of Oct 7 on the major campuses to convince Wall Street, to convince people in Silicon Valley, that there really was a problem” with higher education, said historian Niall Ferguson, another school founder.
A larger fundraising campaign is expected to start in January. Whether prospective students find UATX as attractive as donors remains to be seen. UATX currently lacks accreditation and can receive it only after its first class graduates. As a way to offset the risk students are taking, the first class of students is receiving full-tuition scholarships worth about $130,000. More than 40% of the students in the class hail from Texas and a third are female.
Executives from Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Boring Company are helping to develop the school’s engineering curriculum. Lonsdale, the school’s board chair, is gifting a few acres of land outside Austin, adjacent to SpaceX and Boring, for a science and technology center. UATX is also searching for a main campus.
Don’t forget that many institutions, such as Britain’s prestigious public schools, began with visionary people with means, who not only wanted to build a lasting legacy, but contribute to the betterment of society. If nothing else, to give the next generation a decent education, rather than radical ideological indoctrination.
