Socrates, who mentioned “All I do know is that I do know nothing,” is a job mannequin for Pano Kanelos, president of the brand new College of Austin. Socrates by no means stopped asking questions, even when the Athenian elite charged him with impiety and corrupting the youth of the city-state.
“Socrates was very unpleasant,” says Michael Shellenberger, who will educate about politics, censorship, and free speech on the non-public college. “Folks hated him a lot they determined he needed to die.”
The College of Austin, which is able to admit its first-class of 100 undergraduates in fall 2024, hopes to create a “pluralistic group” dedicated to “argument and inquiry,” says Kanelos, a Shakespeare scholar who headed St. John’s Faculty in Maryland, which is understood for its “nice books” curriculum.
“It’s simpler to construct one thing new” than to vary present establishments, says Shellenberger. The creator of San Fransicko and Apocalypse By no means, he began on “the intense left” however grew to become a “onerous to categorise” pro-nuclear environmentalist. “The second is true,” he says.
One would possibly say the second is ideal. The wealthy have revolted: “Pissed-off billionaires” and miffed millionaires are pledging to not give any extra money to Harvard, Penn, Dartmouth, and different elite universities. They’re urging rich pals to shut their checkbooks, too.
Whereas most of those disenchanted alumni hope to return their alma maters to their unique tutorial mission, others wish to begin recent. What if there have been a brand new college with no DEI directors, no tenured professors, no dorms named after “problematic” donors of yore, no baggage?
A “heterodox” group together with historian Niall Ferguson, author Bari Weiss, biologist Heather Heying, and entrepreneur Joe Lonsdale got here up with the thought for a brand new form of college in the course of the pandemic. Amongst advisers and potential school are social psychologist Jonathan Haidt; economists Glenn Loury, Tyler Cowen, and Deirdre McCloskey; author and activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali; playwright David Mamet; columnist Sohrab Ahmari; author and social critic Caitlin Flanagan; philosophers Peter Boghossian and Kathleen Inventory; and authorized scholar and activist Nadine Strossen.
Many on the left see the College of Austin as a reactionary political enterprise or maybe The Revenge of the Canceled. “Everyone seems to be making an attempt to pull us into the tradition warfare,” says Kanelos. He’s decided to withstand. He doesn’t wish to run an “anti-woke” college or set up a haven for conservatives or libertarians or Christians or . . . nicely, anybody.
College of Austin college students, who shall be chosen on the premise of take a look at scores, grades, and a willingness to take an opportunity on one thing new, is not going to be supplied mental consolation.
“True studying is uncomfortable,” says Shellenberger. “Should you’re comfy, you’re most likely not studying.”
The College of Austin raised $230 million in two years from 2,600 donors, together with 113 “founders” who gave “six- to eight-figure items,” based on Kanelos, placing the college’s builders approach forward of their fundraising objectives.
Because the begin of the Ivy donor revolt, “we’ve seen a shift in funding” from established universities to options, says Kanelos. “Somebody who provides us $10 million isn’t giving to their alma mater.”
Due to its donors, UATX will provide 4 tuition-free years to its “founding class” of 100 undergraduates. About 2,500 college students have utilized.
For subsequent courses, Kanelos hopes tuition shall be $32,000—half of what Harvard expenses.
He hopes to launch a lean, environment friendly, teaching-centric establishment. There shall be no leafy campus, no quad or bell tower, and, in fact, no soccer crew.
The brand new college is renting house in a historic downtown landmark, the Scarbrough Constructing, which as soon as housed a division retailer.
College students will dwell downtown in shared flats—they’ll do their very own cooking—and shuttle to their courses. They’re anticipated to start out their very own golf equipment and actions.
Whereas instructing shall be face-to-face, most administrative and assist jobs shall be outsourced to a hub in Guatemala to maintain prices down.
The College of Austin has provisional accreditation from the state of Texas, but it surely wanted 1,800 pages of paperwork to start out the accreditation cycle. In Texas, a would-be college should outline its mission, submit a monetary plan, and present that it may well fulfill it. As well as, a brand new college should clarify the way it will assess its success, clarify its governance plan, and describe its admissions standards, amenities, and so forth.
Till the college is absolutely accredited, which gained’t occur till the primary class graduates, college students gained’t be eligible for federal or state monetary help, resembling Pell Grants for lower-income college students. That makes it onerous for a brand new college to recruit college students—except it has beneficiant donors to fund monetary help.
The College of Austin is not going to admit college students based mostly on race, gender, or socioeconomic standing. That type of range is just not a aim. The college desires “mental pluralism,” creativity, management, and “dedication to our ideas” of inquiry, says Kanelos. And college students have to be ready for tutorial rigor as proven by their highschool grades, class rank, and take a look at scores.
The College of Austin has examined its attraction by providing a summer time program it calls Forbidden Programs—so named “as a result of larger schooling has made it tough to inquire overtly into vexing questions with honesty and with out worry of disgrace,” based on the UATX web site. Kanelos says that this system has drawn younger folks with various concepts and backgrounds.
Of their first two years, College of Austin undergraduates will take interdisciplinary “mental foundations” programs in philosophy, historical past, literature, quantitative reasoning, and science.
This system is just not in contrast to the great-books curriculum at St. John’s, says Kanelos. However St. John’s is all nice books for 4 years. Within the second two years on the College of Austin, college students will select a focal space of examine and work on “making use of data to resolve broad-based issues.” He hopes college students will work on initiatives with native suppose tanks, firms, and civic and governmental teams.
As the house of Texas’s flagship college, the state capitol, and a thriving tech sector, Austin provides loads of studying alternatives.
If all goes nicely, UATX will enroll 200 college students within the second yr and can get to 1,000 college students in 4 years, Kanelos says. “Then we’ll resolve the place to go from there.”
