Elon Musk
Tax filings show that Musk's charity is seeking to establish an elementary and secondary school in Austin
Thu, Dec 14, 2023, 5:49 p.m. GMT
Elon Musk plans to open a new university in Texas, according to tax returns.
Bloomberg reported that filings show Musk donated $100 million to his charity The Foundation to establish an elementary and secondary school in Austin — and later sought accreditation from the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges to apply for the establishment of a university.
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The foundation said the school and university curriculum will “combine formal teaching by experienced teachers in subjects such as mathematics, science, engineering and physics with practical learning experiences, including simulations, case studies, manufacturing/design projects and laboratories”. .
The school is initially aiming to admit 50 students based on performance.
“The school does not want the inability to pay tuition or fees to be a barrier for students. “So when a student is admitted to the school, he or she will be provided tuition and financial aid within the limits of available funds,” the tax return states.
It adds that the school is funded primarily through donations and tuition fees.
In an interview in Beijing in 2015, Musk revealed that he had enrolled his five children at Ad Astra, now called Astra Nova, another nonprofit experimental school he founded in Hawthorne, California, on the campus of his company SpaceX.
Musk moved to Texas in 2020 after criticizing California's Silicon Valley and the San Francisco Bay Area for having an “outsized influence on the world.” In 2021, he moved Tesla headquarters from Palo Alto, California to Austin, Texas, and SpaceX also has a large test facility in McGregor, Texas.
Musk has been criticized for allegedly holding anti-Semitic views. This week he welcomed notorious conspiracy theorist Alex Jones – who was banned for abusive behavior and fined in 2018 for spreading defamatory lies about the Sandy Hook shootings – back to X, the social media platform that used to be was known as Twitter and which Musk bought and mostly immediately removed from his hate speech moderation team. Musk welcomed Jones back into a Twitter Spaces conversation that also included self-confessed misogynist Andrew Tate and several far-right politicians.
Austin, an otherwise liberal city in a predominantly conservative state, is already home to one of the state's public universities, the University of Texas.
Today it is also home to a private liberal arts college founded by right-wing journalist Bari Weiss, who resigned as an opinion writer for The New York Times after she claimed her complaints about workplace bullying were ignored. The college, called the University of Austin or UATX, was founded on the principles of “free thought” and as an alternative to the “rise of illiberalism.”
In October 2023, the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board designated the college as a degree-granting institution. It is now accepting applicants for its first undergraduate program, which will begin in fall 2024.
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