Elon Musk has apparently splashed the cash on opening a new university in Texas.
You can’t help but think what a Musk university would look like - perhaps classes in rocket science, or lessons on how to change names of popular social media sites?
He's reportedly donated a whopping $100 million (£78,400) to his own charity, The Foundation, to open a primary and secondary school specializing in science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) subjects, which will eventually expand to a university. That's what Bloomberg has gleaned from looking at his tax filings.
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He’s reportedly already applied for accreditation from the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges for launching a university.
Even though there’s a big price tag, the school is supposedly only taking on 50 students to begin with, and it’ll be funded through donations and tuition fees.
Musk posted on X earlier this week that his two companies, Tesla and SpaceX, have “noticed a meaningful degradation in the capability of US college graduates over the past several years” - so it’ll be interesting to see what he might come up with for his swanky new university.
Musk has not revealed a name for the school yet, but in 2021, he wrote on X: “Am thinking of starting new university: Texas Institute of Technology & Science,” noting that it “will have epic merch" and be "universally admired".
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out why he might want to go for that name (if you're still in the dark, consider it as an acronym).
The models of Tesla cars spell out ‘S3XY’ - maybe this kind of humor is Musk’s equivalent to spelling out rude words upside down on a calculator.
But, to be fair to him, Musk has already had a bit of experience in running a school.
In 2014, he took five of his sons out of school and created a new experimental school for them and SpaceX employees, called Ad Astra.
There were no grades, music lessons or language lessons, but it closed when Musk’s kids graduated.
In 2020, an online version, called Astra Nova, was launched by the previous faculty and students.
When the new school in Texas opens, Musk won’t be too far away. He moved to Texas in 2020, and it's also home to Tesla’s headquarters and a SpaceX testing facility. We wonder if he’ll ever pop in to give a seminar.
So, who knows what a Musk University will look like, but he better start thinking of a cheeky name.