Elon Musk is the most divisive figure in the hi-tech world, but there is no doubt that few people are as active as he is. The founder of Tesla and SpaceX, who just over a year ago became the owner of Twitter, renamed X, is now preparing to launch a new university. This was revealed by Bloomberg, who uncovered the plans of The Foundation, the charity to which Musk has donated $100 million of his fortune, with the aim of opening a primary and secondary school dedicated to STEM subjects. After moving from California to Texas, where SpaceX’s launch site and Tesla’s factory are based, to Austin, the capital of one of the lowest taxed states in the United States, Musk aims to create a university with alternative study methods in Austin.
Not the first school founded by Elon Musk
Like many other visionaries who built enormous wealth through intuition, preferring to follow their instincts and plans instead of focusing their energies on the academic path, Musk believes the time has come to renew American schools’ learning and study methods. The need to reform the system passes through the desire to start from the bottom, from primary and secondary school, and then to university.
In the past, Musk has already shown an interest in education and methods other than the standard ones in the United States, so much so that he started the Ad Astra school for his own children and those of some Tesla and SpaceX employees (the institute has 40 members) in Hawthorne, California, where the space company’s headquarters are located.
Although few details have filtered through as yet as to how Musk’s institute will develop, the aim is to provide top-level education focusing on science, engineering, mathematics and physics, with a focus on practical learning and minimal room for theoretical notions. Experienced lecturers and professionals in their respective fields will be called upon to teach in schools and universities. They can provide alternating case studies, labs, manufacturing and design projects, and field experience to simulate design phases.
A way to train future Tesla and SpaceX employees
The idea is, therefore, to train students from an early age to increase skills and experience as the path progresses to university. Those who are selected will have access to a high-level programme, which, at least in the initial phase, will have a limited number of students, with only 50 enrolled. However, the challenge is to increase the number of enrolled students over time. It starts with small numbers also because it starts from the bottom, with primary and secondary schools, while the organisation aims to obtain the increase from the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on College to expand the aims with the actual startup of the university.
More than a few who consider Musk a rich businessman who does nothing without getting something in return see the project as an attempt to train future employees of Tesla, SpaceX, X and the other companies founded, led or financed by the world’s richest entrepreneur. A vision in line with Musk’s needs, who would thus gain useful skills to raise the level of their respective companies, with bright young minds equipped with the ideal mindset to work following the dictates of the boss.
It is worth mentioning in this regard that Musk probably kept in mind his personal, educational background, which he painstakingly concluded by passing through three different countries. After attending public schools in his native Pretoria (South Africa), he moved to Canada to study at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, before moving after two years to the University of Pennsylvania, where he obtained a Bachelor of Science in Economics and a Bachelor of Arts in Physics.
At 24, in 1995, the first arrival in California for a PhD at Stanford University was abandoned two days later to follow entrepreneurial aspirations between the Internet and space exploration. A choice that repaid him beyond his wildest expectations.
