Parents face a tough choice today. We want to give our kids the best education. But we’re leery about shipping them off to college campuses, many of which have devolved into little more than indoctrination centers.
One friend put it bluntly: “I spent $300,000 sending my daughter to college and she came back a communist.”
Rational Optimists know the world is full of problems. But we don’t complain or get angry. Instead, we celebrate and amplify the entrepreneurs who are solving them. College’s problems are an opportunity for something much better to emerge, as we first wrote about here.
My editor Dan Steinhart and I visited the new University of Austin (UATX) last week. It’s what college is supposed to be: committed to free speech, excellence, meritocracy, and entrepreneurship.
What I saw filled me with hope for the future of college in America.
No hushed conversations about “forbidden” topics. No self-censorship. UATX encourages open, evidence-based discussion about ideas that matter.
It was refreshing to be around smart young people openly debating ideas, backed by data. During lunch with three professors, we talked about “taboo” topics like police shootings and religion that would’ve gotten us kicked out of Harvard or Yale.
UATX’s founders didn't just jot down a few nice words about free speech in a mission statement. It enshrined them in a constitution, complete with a “Bill of Rights” and what amounts to a Supreme Court.
This means kids are free to ask hard questions… which is how you get to the truth. UATX’s motto, “Dare to Think,” and it's lived throughout the campus. It closely aligns with our ROS motto: “Dare to Know.”
College serves two main purposes: learning and networking. College’s monopoly on learning has already been disrupted. MIT, America’s no. 2 ranked college, makes all its courses available online for free. Anyone with an internet connection can learn from the world's best professors.
Why do parents still write those eye-watering tuition checks to Harvard? The network. Doors swing open when you join that elite club of alumni. No online course can offer that.
Most new Universities fail because they can't solve this chicken-and-egg problem: How do you attract top students without an influential alumni network? And how do you build that network without top students?
UATX cracked this code. It launched with heavyweight founders: Joe Lonsdale, who co-founded Palantir, now a $50 billion tech company; Niall Ferguson, whose history books are read by world leaders; and Bari Weiss, whose media company, The Free Press, is disrupting The New York Times.
Those are three of the most influential figures in technology, education, and media vouching for UATX. This matters. I learned many freshman students have already received job offers from one of Austin's billionaire entrepreneurs.
Most college graduates leave campus with a diploma and debt. UATX students leave with something else: a business they built from scratch.
Through its Polaris Project, each student is required to launch their own venture. It's not a typical business class where you write hypothetical plans. UATX urges its students to use their unique talents to build something that makes the world better.
The first class started just two months ago. Already, one student launched a media company and signed two six-figure deals. Another is developing a network of skate parks, addressing the lack of community spaces for young men.
UATX has brilliant kids who aren't afraid to think differently. It gives them mentorship from successful founders, plus four years to experiment. It’s only a matter of time before the Polaris Project incubates a billion-dollar startup.
In the future, I’d love to see UATX invest its endowment like a venture fund, backing its own graduates' companies. They could build a self-reinforcing cycle: successful alumni funding the next generation of founders.
In 1962, JFK visited NASA and met a janitor carrying a broom. When asked what he did for NASA, the janitor replied, “I'm helping put a man on the moon.”
That same sense of mission radiates through UATX. Everyone I met, from professors who left cushy jobs at prestigious universities, to the president and provost, believes in the mission of reinventing college. They're not complaining about broken systems; they're building anew!
That's the Rational Optimist way.
“You start a university to be FOR something, not AGAINST something.” That’s what Pano Kanelos, UATX’s president, told us.
He’s so right. The corporate media dismisses UATX as a new “anti-woke university,” whatever that means. This lazy reporting causes roughly half the population to write off UATX without even looking into it. A shame.
The only thing UATX is “anti” is censorship.
If your kids are preparing for college, I highly recommend checking out UATX. They can get an elite education without walking on eggshells. Instead of graduating as a communist, they might graduate owning a business!
UATX is a place where the next generation will learn to think freely, speak truthfully, and build boldly. We might look back at this as THE moment when higher education began to change… when “My kid got into UATX” carries the same weight as “My kid got into Harvard.”
If you're an educator: UATX is hiring people who believe in its mission. Consider being part of the solution.
If you're philanthropically minded: Consider supporting an institution that's actively fixing higher education rather than perpetuating its problems.
I was happy to see my friend Matt Ridley’s great book How Innovation Works on the first-semester reading list. Maybe the next time I’m visiting UATX, it’ll be with Matt.
Will Elon cure blindness?
“Our goal will be to turn the lights on for someone who's spent decades living in the dark.”
Those words from Dan Adams, Neuralink's lead neuroscientist, sent shivers down my spine.
We’ve talked about Noland Arbaugh, the first human recipient of a Neuralink brain implant. Paralyzed from the neck down, he can now control computers with his mind, which lets him work and live a life that was never possible for a paralyzed person ever before.
Now, Elon Musk and his team of mad scientists have their sights on curing blindness.
Neuralink's “Blindsight” project recently received the FDA's “breakthrough device” designation. At the most basic level, it will bypass the eyes and send visual information directly to the brain’s visual cortex. Early versions will be grainy, like old Nintendo graphics. But it should improve quickly. And it already works in monkeys.
Technological innovation is the ultimate problem solver. People used to die from routine infections, so we invented antibiotics and vaccines. The world used to shut down after sunset until we invented the light bulb.
Hopefully, a decade from now, I can write, “People used to be blind or stuck in wheelchairs until Neuralink came along.”
As Elon says: “We've got to be excited about the future. We've got to do things that make us want to live. What inspires you? What makes you excited about the future?”
That's why we started The Rational Optimist Society. In a world drowning in doom and gloom, we want to inspire you—and your kids—to dream big.
Meeting one of my heroes
Last week, I found myself in a sprawling Berkeley house among 200 of the world's brightest minds at Jason Crawford's Roots of Progress conference. Every conversation was electric.
One of the highlights was meeting Steven Pinker, whose book Enlightenment Now changed how I view human progress.
Using data, Pinker argues that despite what many people think, the world isn't falling apart; it's actually improving. And we should continue using reason and science to keep making things better.
Pinker is a quintessential Rational Optimist. He celebrates humanity’s achievements while acknowledging how far we still have to go.
Steven was excited about The Rational Optimist Society. Hopefully, we can get him on our podcast soon.
I was tricked by the media
We've all read the stories. San Francisco is a dystopian nightmare, overrun by drug addicts.
As a Rational Optimist, I should have known better than to trust the corporate doom machine. Still, I fell for it.
Then I actually went there.
Yes, there are addicts and homeless people in tents. But I strolled around downtown and up to the Golden Gate Bridge. It was beautiful and I felt safe.
I'd been fooled by the “positivity gap.” Americans report being four times more satisfied with their personal lives than with the country's direction:
Source: Gallup
We live in two realities:
1: Our daily lives. Watching your kid score a goal. Planning a vacation. The simple joy of a good meal with friends. Feeling strong and healthy after a workout.
2: The news feed. War. Political chaos. Climate disaster. Crime. Guilt.
Ignoring the news is the easiest “cheat code” to living a happier life.
Get outside and exercise. Go for dinner with your family. Read a book. Book a vacation. Any of these activities are better for you than watching the news.
See you next week.
Hey, you don’t have to wait until the end of the week for good news. Follow us on X for regular updates.
Writer: Stephen McBride: https://x.com/DisruptionHedge
Editor: Dan Steinhart: https://x.com/dan_steinhart
Rational Optimist Society: https://x.com/RationalOptSoc