University of Austin
The University of Austin is an unaccredited private liberal arts university located in Austin, Texas, United States. The university established a campus in Downtown Austin's Scarbrough Building, enrolled its first undergraduate cohort in the fall of 2024. It is certified by the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board to award degrees and was granted "candidate for accreditation" status by the Middle States Commission on Higher Education in 2025. UATX does not charge tuition or accept government funding.
Conceived of in May of 2021 by Joe Lonsdale, Pano Kanelos, Niall Ferguson, and Bari Weiss, the University of Austin's founding was announced in October of 2021, billed as a new institution that could address problems in higher education. The announcement was met with significant media attention, with many praising the concept, but others were skeptical of its viability. The project was described by reviewers as "anti-woke" and "anti-cancel culture". Numerous prominent academics served as initial advisors to UATX.
The school, having raised $200 million in private donations prior to admitting its first class, offered full scholarships to every student accepted. Following another large donation in 2025 by Jeff Yass, UATX announced that tuition would be permanently free.
The inaugural class entered the school on September 2, 2024. For the second class, the school set a new admissions rule that applicants with high scores on standardized tests would be automatically accepted. The second class entered in the fall of 2025. At that point, the university's two classes, totaling 150 students, were educated by 34 academic staff members.
History
Origins (2021-24)
The University of Austin was conceived in May 2021 when venture capitalist Joe Lonsdale, St. John's College president Pano Kanelos, British–American historian Niall Ferguson, and journalist Bari Weiss met in Austin. The proposal was publicized six months later in an article by Kanelos in Weiss's newsletter Common Sense.Founding faculty fellows included Peter Boghossian, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and Kathleen Stock. Other advisors included former Harvard President Lawrence Summers, former ACLU President Nadine Strossen, and former president of the American Enterprise Institute Arthur Brooks.
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.
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". Shortly thereafter, Pinker followed suit. UATX apologized for creating "unnecessary complications" for Pinker and Zimmer by not clarifying what their advisory roles entailed.
On June 9, 2022, the University of Austin opened applications for its "Forbidden Courses" program with two-week-long sessions in the old Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas, Texas. Harlan Crow provided classroom space in Dallas for UATX. On July 6, 2022, the school announced that Richard Dawkins had joined its advisory board. 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."
In September 2023, assistant provost Loren Rotner and vice president of communications Hillel Ofek, in a faction that involved board member Joe Lonsdale, criticized the leadership of founding president Pano Kanelos. They did not succeed in persuading others of their position. Rotner and Ofek temporarily left UATX.
After receiving certification in October 2023 from the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board to award degrees, 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. Large donors behind the $200 million included Harlan Crow and Bill Ackman.
In late 2023, UATX reported a surge in interest from donors "horrified by the response at top-tier universities" to the 2023 Hamas-led attack on Israel. In June 2024, the University of Austin announced a $5 million bitcoin endowment in partnership with cryptocurrency platform Unchained Capital.
Active university (2024–present)
On September 2, 2024, UATX held a convocation for its inaugural group of students, the class of 2028, beginning the college's first academic year. By this time, tuition was about $32,000 per year and the school employed about 20 faculty members.In November 2024, UATX was featured in a CBS News 60 Minutes segment titled "Disruptor U."
In January 2025, a group of board members led by Lonsdale convinced the board that Kanelos needed to leave the role of president and that UATX should emphasize technology in its curriculum and deemphasize the "great books". It was announced that Kanelos would serve as chancellor instead. Two months later, Rotner returned as associate provost and Ofek as chief strategy officer.
On April 2, 2025, the first day of spring quarter, Lonsdale summoned all faculty and staff and told them they must subscribe to the principles of anti-communism, anti-socialism, identity politics and anti-Islamism. When UATX professor Michael Lind asked for clarification, he was told that "communists" and "socialists" were people who don't "believe in private property" and who "hate the rich" and that the UATX board would make a case-by-case decision on whether “New Deal liberals” could work at the school.
On May 2, 2025, Carlos Carvalho was announced as the second president of UATX. The next day, the school held its annual First Principles Summit, at which Niall Ferguson warned UATX leaders to “think twice” about whether Donald Trump was truly in the wrong to threaten Harvard University and Harvard professors truly in the right to resist his plan. Mike Shires, chief of staff and senior vice president for strategy, left the school that month.
On July 15, 2025, the conservative Manhattan Institute urged Trump to predicate universities' federal funding on their compliance with a new set of rules. Two days later, Carvalho expressed support for this initiative. Nadine Strossen, Jonathan Rauch and Jonathan Haidt approached Carvalho with objections; Carvalho argued that UATX had always been a right-wing project. On July 18, Larry Summers posted to X that he had resigned from the advisory board "effective today... as I am not comfortable with the course that UATX has set nor the messages it promulgates". Strossen, Rauch and Haidt also resigned. Kanelos resigned on October 1.
Nell Gluckman, writing in The Chronicle of Higher Education, reported that near the end of 2025 the UATX website indicated it had 34 staff members in addition to faculty, while LinkedIn showed that about 20 employees had departed during the year, including "the president, the provost, the lead fund raiser, the executive director of admissions, as well as people who worked in events, operations, and other positions". Mike Shires reflected, "Some of that was them just naturally moving on, some of that is the nature of start-ups, some of that is strategic decisions made by the leadership." Despite these departures, the school continued to obtain large donations and enrolled its second class.
On November 5, 2025, UATX announced, in conjunction with a $100 million gift from Libertarian investor Jeff Yass, that they will never charge tuition or accept government funding.
Academics
UATX’s undergraduate program begins with a core curriculum consisting of 15 courses based on a Great Books canon. In their junior and senior years, students specialize in interdisciplinary academic centers. A practical capstone project is undertaken across all four years. Faculty staff include Tim Kane, Boris Fishman, Eliah G. Overbey, Michael Shellenberger, and Coleman Hughes.Admissions
Admission is based on a policy that requires both "Academic Capability" and a "Capacity for Creativity and Leadership". Academic Capability is demonstrated through performance on standardized tests or other public examinations, grade point average, class ranking, enrollment in an academically rigorous course of study, and English composition and writing skills. Capacity for Creativity and Leadership is primarily demonstrated through an applicant's reported activities, as well as a personal statement and essay. The university also selects applicants who will provide intellectual pluralism for each class.In March 2025, UATX introduced its "merit-first admissions policy" where applicants with at least a 1460 SAT, 33 ACT, or 105 CLT earn automatic admission. The automatic admission is contingent on meeting eligibility requirements and passing an integrity check.