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The University of Austin (UATX) is a private, nonprofit,[4][5] liberal arts university located in Austin, Texas.[6] The university has established a campus in downtown Austin's Scarbrough Building, and enrolled its first undergraduate cohort in the fall of 2024.[7][8]
 | |
| Motto | Dare to Think |
|---|---|
| Type | Private liberal arts college |
| Established | November 8, 2021 |
| Founders | Joe Lonsdale Pano Kanelos Niall Ferguson Bari Weiss |
| Accreditation | Unaccredited |
| Endowment | $200 million (2023)[1] |
| President | Pano Kanelos |
| Provost | Jacob Howland |
Academic staff | 27[2] |
| Students | 92[3] |
| Location | Austin , Texas , 78701 , U.S. 30.2850°N 97.7453°W |
| Campus | Urban |
| Colors | Navy and gold |
| Website | uaustin.org |
 | |
UATX is not accredited,[9] and its students are not eligible for Federal Student Aid. It is approved to grant bachelor’s degrees by the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board.[10] The first two classes have been offered full-tuition scholarships.[11][12]
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The University of Austin was conceived in May 2021 when venture capitalist Joe Lonsdale, St. John's College president Pano Kanelos, scholar Niall Ferguson, and journalist Bari Weiss met in Austin, Texas.[13] The proposal was publicized six months later in an article by Kanelos in Weiss's Substack newsletter Common Sense (now The Free Press).[14][15]
Founding faculty fellows included Peter Boghossian, Ayaan Hirsi Ali (Hoover Institution), and Kathleen Stock.[16] Other advisors included former Harvard President Lawrence Summers, former ACLU President Nadine Strossen, and former president of the American Enterprise Institute Arthur Brooks.[15]
In November 2021, the university's website listed Robert Zimmer, Larry Summers, John Nunes, Gordon Gee, Steven Pinker, Deirdre McCloskey, Leon Kass, Jonathan Haidt, Glenn Loury, Joshua Katz, Vickie Sullivan, Geoffrey Stone, Bill McClay, and Tyler Cowen as advisors to the university.[17]
On November 11, 2021, Robert Zimmer announced his resignation from the university board, saying that UATX had made statements about higher education that "diverged very significantly from my own views".[18] Shortly thereafter, Pinker followed suit.[19] UATX apologized for creating "unnecessary complications" for Pinker and Zimmer by not clarifying [sooner] what their advisory roles entailed.[20]
On June 9, 2022, the University of Austin was taking applications for its "Forbidden Courses" program with two-week-long sessions in the old (pre-1954) Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas, Texas.[21] Philanthropist Harlan Crow, a donor to the university,[22] provided classroom space in Dallas for UATX. On July 6, 2022, the school announced that Richard Dawkins had joined its advisory board.[23] In December 2022, board member Heather Heying resigned stating that the school was not adequately invested in scientific inquiry and "does not represent my scientific and pedagogical values."[24]
After receiving certification from the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board to award degrees in October 2023, UATX began accepting applications for its first four-year undergraduate cohort enrolling in Fall 2024, and established a campus in Austin's Scarbrough Building. The entire class of 100 students received full four-year scholarships, paid from private donations. By November 2023, UATX had reportedly raised $200 million from 2,600 donors and received over 6,000 inquiries from potential faculty.[1] In Bloomberg, UATX reported a surge in interest from donors "horrified by the response at top-tier universities" to the 2023 Hamas-led attack on Israel.[25]
In March 2024, UATX reported that they had formed a student debate society, the Austin Union, modeled after the Oxford Union.[26] In June, the University of Austin announced a $5 million bitcoin endowment in partnership with cryptocurrency platform Unchained Capital.[27] In November 2024, UATX was featured in a CBS News 60 Minutes segment titled “Disruptor U.”[28]
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UATX requires standardized test scores in its application.[29] It does not consider race, gender, or social class in its admissions process, "stand[ing] firmly against that sort of discrimination."[15]
UATX’s undergraduate program begins with a core curriculum consisting of 15 courses based on a Great Books canon.[30] In their junior and senior years, students specialize in interdisciplinary academic centers.[31] A practical capstone project is undertaken across all four years.[32]
UATX is certified by the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board to award a Bachelor of Arts in Liberal Studies degree. It is not an accredited university. [10]
UATX is in the process of determining eligibility to apply for candidate for accreditation status with the Middle States Commission on Higher Education (MSCHE).[9] MSCHE is an institutional accrediting agency recognized by the U.S. Secretary of Education to conduct accreditation and pre-accreditation (candidacy status) activities for institutions of higher education, and direct assessment programs offered at those institutions. The graduation of a first class of undergraduates is normally a prerequisite for accreditation, meaning UATX can expect the first accreditation cycle to have been completed after the graduation of the inaugural class in 2028.[33]
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The initial announcement of the project received some positive reception,[34] including praise from Law & Liberty for ushering in "a new era in educational reform,"[35] and applause from The New Criterion for its efforts to "keep that old flame of free inquiry alive."[36] New York Times opinion columnist Ross Douthat saw the launch of a new university as a positive development, pointing out how few major universities have been established since the nineteenth century, but acknowledged how expensive doing so would be. He also saw conflicting forces in the project, including the "tension between the desire to promote great academic seriousness and the culture-war flag-waving that might be necessary to rally donor support".[37]
The project also garnered criticism. Initial responses to the project included criticism of the lack of a plan to achieve the project's goals.[9] The New York Times journalist Anemona Hartocollis questioned in 2021 whether the founders would be able to "translate a provocative idea into a viable institution" while The New Republic's Alex Shephard described the plan as "largely half baked".[38][39] Jennifer Wunder, a professor at Georgia Gwinnett College who participated in the process of obtaining her institution's initial accreditation, in a since-deleted Twitter thread[40] considered UATX’s 2021 business plan timeline to establish accredited graduate and undergraduate programs to be nearly impossible to meet.[41] The proposal for a University of Austin was described in 2021 by Gabriella Swerling in The Daily Telegraph[42] as "anti-cancel culture" and by Alex Shephard in The New Republic as "anti-woke".[39]
After initially holding silent about the reasons for his resignation from UATX’s advisory board, Steven Pinker told The Harvard Crimson that UATX had (as the journalists put it) "confused freedom of speech with the political right"—that it had staffed itself primarily with people on the right, regardless of their position on free speech, extending to some opponents of it.[19] However, upon the announcement of the certification of UATX’s undergraduate program, Pinker acknowledged UATX’s "maturity" in light of his previous "misgivings," lauding its newly earned certification and the "contrast & challenge to the legacy universities" it offers.[43]
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