FWIW - I am a Stanford grad, with two kids in elementary school. I have suspected for a couple years now that my kids may end up doing something totally different for college than I did - not sure what that looks like exactly, but I simply do not see higher education in 2021 as a system that promotes rigorous learning.
I hope U Austin flourishes and my kids can attend this or something created in the same vein. Or maybe you kick off a mini-rebellion and some "traditional" schools join this movement out of pure market opportunity. In any case, I think this approach to education is so, so important and I would happily give money to this over my actual alma mater.
Also, random note: a notable omission on the list of displaced academics here is Jordan Peterson. Would love to see him actually get to teach again before retiring - it's so obvious he loves it and wishes he could. Is he doing his own thing?
You had us at hello. The rest was mostly a recap of what those of us with school aged kids already know.
Im sure we aren’t alone in being on track to save mid 6 figures per child for university, only to question if there is a place it’s worth it. My husband and I both have masters degrees. We demand a LOT of our kids. We sacrifice to put them in a private school that demands a LOT - both in and outside of the classroom where character expectation and excellence in outside endeavors (athletics, arts, STEM) are as high as academic expectations.
It’s worth every penny - which is why we sacrifice even more and donate to help children access the school regardless of their parents financial means.
Still, we often wonder what comes next? What alternative paths are out there? Dropping mid six figures for some university to crush their love of learning, kill their curiosity, condemn their work ethic, and destroys their spirit, seems like a poor use of hard earned cash from us, and hard earned opportunity for them.
So from all of us who see the possibility of a brighter, more intelligent, more thinking future every time we look at our kids faces - Thank You!!!!
Thanks to all of you for standing up and for doing something so important. I have a 6th and 8th grader and the thought of sending them to college as it is right now scares the crap out of me. I don’t want their thoughts and views stifled because they aren’t the “right” ones. Never being challenged or taught to think about different views or debate is going to have huge consequences on our society. Shutting down anything you don’t agree with or makes you uncomfortable is dangerous. All the best! Hoping this will catch fire and spread.
Wonderful news. My two cents. Employ an evangelist to facilitate replication of U of Austin across America. Employ an outreach official to set up internships and employment opportunities at the highest possible levels. High schoolers who want bright futures in tech or media or politics should see U of Austin as a strong partner. And do club sports, not intercollegiate sports. Do not let your web site become an infestation of DEI platitudes. Don't do DEI at all. Do people. Don't burden kids with the cost of paying for heavy layers of deans and assistant deans and assistant to assistant deans and other assorted bureaucrats.
Good luck. America needs parallel structures; in education, in tech, in soft drinks, in media.
Wonderful! I've been wondering why the Cancelleds didn't get together and form a counter-university. Turns out they were already doing it!
I hope you can keep the founding spirit going. The spiral of tenure and orthodoxy is a powerful force. Per your website, you're pursuing accreditation, which is another powerful force toward orthodoxy. You'd stand a better chance of maintaining independence if you avoided both tenure and accreditation.
This is exactly it. Wealthy people need to stop complaining about illiberal universities, while simultaneously making big donations, and start building new ones.
This is not the first alternative university or college I've heard of, but I find such efforts heartening.
I'm currently in the belly of the beast, employed as a member of the faculty of a large public university. My institution has not yet been wholly consumed by illiberal ideology, due to a number of factors. I teach in the humanities, though, and I certainly know the woke walk amongst us.
Tales of academic dissidents have inspired me to be more daring in my own teaching, to give my students permission to think and speak freely, challenging them to embrace the discomfort that is essential to any real learning. So, I'll work the inside angle, while you all pursue this new vision on the outside. Perhaps, between us, we can start to move things in a better direction.
This is fantastic! I’m a professor at an illiberal big ten university and I would love to work at a place like this. It would be an immense reprieve from all the craziness that we have to deal with every day.
I was elated to read about your enormous undertaking to create a university, where people will be free and encouraged to think as individuals. Also, I never in my life ,as an American, would have thought I would have ever written that sentence. I have two very young grandsons and have given much thought to the fact that they may never attend college. This was a gigantic shift for me as my father was an academic, a department chair at Penn for virtually his whole career. Obviously for me , and then for my own family higher learning was the way. However, I have watched the entire system slide into indoctrination over the past twenty years, and over the past ten it has been full steam ahead. So thank you very much for creating a true place of higher learning.
One slightly in-the-weeds thing I think you'll see: "traditional" universities waste an incredible amount every year on bureaucracy. What would it look like if you instead focused that money on researchers and scholarships? Am pretty certain at this point you could pay all your professors 50% more than market rate and still have plenty leftover if you minimized the multiple layers of deans / diversity bureaucrats etc.
Awesome. I’ve never been a fan of the status quo in education, and it’s only gotten worse in the past 30 years. Courage will be rewarded. It’s great to see so many names I recognize involved in this project.
This is all very well, but allow me to sound a bit skeptical here. The founders are a mix of genuinely serious academics and other public figures who, with all due respect, are not academics, and there presence as founders of a university raises an eyebrow no less than if they claimed to found a hospital or a space program. Moreover, even among the academics, many are already into retirement age, and/or have by no means announced their departure from their very comfortable jobs at established institutions.
More to the point. With all due respect, research universities are not primarily about undergraduate instruction, they are about research, first and foremost, and this verbose high-minded essay says precious little about that. How will this new university advance world-class research? What are their plans for hiring faculty? What are their views on erosion of tenure? Will their own faculty be tenured? Even as to undergraduate instruction this long long essay left no concrete details. Only very vague virtue-signalling platitudes. In short, I will remain doubtful , but I will be happy to be pleasantly surprised.
FWIW - I am a Stanford grad, with two kids in elementary school. I have suspected for a couple years now that my kids may end up doing something totally different for college than I did - not sure what that looks like exactly, but I simply do not see higher education in 2021 as a system that promotes rigorous learning.
I hope U Austin flourishes and my kids can attend this or something created in the same vein. Or maybe you kick off a mini-rebellion and some "traditional" schools join this movement out of pure market opportunity. In any case, I think this approach to education is so, so important and I would happily give money to this over my actual alma mater.
Also, random note: a notable omission on the list of displaced academics here is Jordan Peterson. Would love to see him actually get to teach again before retiring - it's so obvious he loves it and wishes he could. Is he doing his own thing?
You had us at hello. The rest was mostly a recap of what those of us with school aged kids already know.
Im sure we aren’t alone in being on track to save mid 6 figures per child for university, only to question if there is a place it’s worth it. My husband and I both have masters degrees. We demand a LOT of our kids. We sacrifice to put them in a private school that demands a LOT - both in and outside of the classroom where character expectation and excellence in outside endeavors (athletics, arts, STEM) are as high as academic expectations.
It’s worth every penny - which is why we sacrifice even more and donate to help children access the school regardless of their parents financial means.
Still, we often wonder what comes next? What alternative paths are out there? Dropping mid six figures for some university to crush their love of learning, kill their curiosity, condemn their work ethic, and destroys their spirit, seems like a poor use of hard earned cash from us, and hard earned opportunity for them.
So from all of us who see the possibility of a brighter, more intelligent, more thinking future every time we look at our kids faces - Thank You!!!!
Thanks to all of you for standing up and for doing something so important. I have a 6th and 8th grader and the thought of sending them to college as it is right now scares the crap out of me. I don’t want their thoughts and views stifled because they aren’t the “right” ones. Never being challenged or taught to think about different views or debate is going to have huge consequences on our society. Shutting down anything you don’t agree with or makes you uncomfortable is dangerous. All the best! Hoping this will catch fire and spread.
Wonderful news. My two cents. Employ an evangelist to facilitate replication of U of Austin across America. Employ an outreach official to set up internships and employment opportunities at the highest possible levels. High schoolers who want bright futures in tech or media or politics should see U of Austin as a strong partner. And do club sports, not intercollegiate sports. Do not let your web site become an infestation of DEI platitudes. Don't do DEI at all. Do people. Don't burden kids with the cost of paying for heavy layers of deans and assistant deans and assistant to assistant deans and other assorted bureaucrats.
Good luck. America needs parallel structures; in education, in tech, in soft drinks, in media.
Wonderful! I've been wondering why the Cancelleds didn't get together and form a counter-university. Turns out they were already doing it!
I hope you can keep the founding spirit going. The spiral of tenure and orthodoxy is a powerful force. Per your website, you're pursuing accreditation, which is another powerful force toward orthodoxy. You'd stand a better chance of maintaining independence if you avoided both tenure and accreditation.
This is exactly it. Wealthy people need to stop complaining about illiberal universities, while simultaneously making big donations, and start building new ones.
This is not the first alternative university or college I've heard of, but I find such efforts heartening.
I'm currently in the belly of the beast, employed as a member of the faculty of a large public university. My institution has not yet been wholly consumed by illiberal ideology, due to a number of factors. I teach in the humanities, though, and I certainly know the woke walk amongst us.
Tales of academic dissidents have inspired me to be more daring in my own teaching, to give my students permission to think and speak freely, challenging them to embrace the discomfort that is essential to any real learning. So, I'll work the inside angle, while you all pursue this new vision on the outside. Perhaps, between us, we can start to move things in a better direction.
Very glad to hear this. It is a pity that this is necessary, but it is clearly is absolutely essential.
This is fantastic! I’m a professor at an illiberal big ten university and I would love to work at a place like this. It would be an immense reprieve from all the craziness that we have to deal with every day.
I was elated to read about your enormous undertaking to create a university, where people will be free and encouraged to think as individuals. Also, I never in my life ,as an American, would have thought I would have ever written that sentence. I have two very young grandsons and have given much thought to the fact that they may never attend college. This was a gigantic shift for me as my father was an academic, a department chair at Penn for virtually his whole career. Obviously for me , and then for my own family higher learning was the way. However, I have watched the entire system slide into indoctrination over the past twenty years, and over the past ten it has been full steam ahead. So thank you very much for creating a true place of higher learning.
This is amazing. The world needs this SO badly.
One slightly in-the-weeds thing I think you'll see: "traditional" universities waste an incredible amount every year on bureaucracy. What would it look like if you instead focused that money on researchers and scholarships? Am pretty certain at this point you could pay all your professors 50% more than market rate and still have plenty leftover if you minimized the multiple layers of deans / diversity bureaucrats etc.
I pressed like as soon as i read the heading.
I was ready to take ANY course there as soon as I heard the collaborators on the project.
As a student, thank you for doing this.
An urgent matter that not many see rn..
I hope the students flock to you and competition dictates the others follow suit.
Awesome. I’ve never been a fan of the status quo in education, and it’s only gotten worse in the past 30 years. Courage will be rewarded. It’s great to see so many names I recognize involved in this project.
Will Dr Jordan Peterson join your faculty?
This is all very well, but allow me to sound a bit skeptical here. The founders are a mix of genuinely serious academics and other public figures who, with all due respect, are not academics, and there presence as founders of a university raises an eyebrow no less than if they claimed to found a hospital or a space program. Moreover, even among the academics, many are already into retirement age, and/or have by no means announced their departure from their very comfortable jobs at established institutions.
More to the point. With all due respect, research universities are not primarily about undergraduate instruction, they are about research, first and foremost, and this verbose high-minded essay says precious little about that. How will this new university advance world-class research? What are their plans for hiring faculty? What are their views on erosion of tenure? Will their own faculty be tenured? Even as to undergraduate instruction this long long essay left no concrete details. Only very vague virtue-signalling platitudes. In short, I will remain doubtful , but I will be happy to be pleasantly surprised.