There seems to be very little precedent of someone founding new successful universities, partially because the perceived success of a university is so dependent on pedigree. There is even less precedent of successful “themed” universities, and the only ones I know that have attained mainstream success (not counting women’s universities or black universities, which are identity-based rather than movement-based) are old religious institutions like Saint John’s or BYU. I think a more realistic alternative would be to buy something like EdX or a competing online academic content aggregator (“MOOC”) and give it an EA slant. The success of programs like EdX is much more recent, and much more “buyable”, since it is just a matter of either licensing the right content or hiring famous academics to give independent courses.
Major philanthropists have successful started universities before, e.g. Carnegie, Rockefeller, Vanderbilt. More recently, major institutes have been started, e.g. IAS, various think tanks. I agree there is a formidable “moat” of prestige that would be hard to overcome, but the prospect is not one to be ruled out entirely.
There seems to be very little precedent of someone founding new successful universities, partially because the perceived success of a university is so dependent on pedigree. There is even less precedent of successful “themed” universities, and the only ones I know that have attained mainstream success (not counting women’s universities or black universities, which are identity-based rather than movement-based) are old religious institutions like Saint John’s or BYU. I think a more realistic alternative would be to buy something like EdX or a competing online academic content aggregator (“MOOC”) and give it an EA slant. The success of programs like EdX is much more recent, and much more “buyable”, since it is just a matter of either licensing the right content or hiring famous academics to give independent courses.
Major philanthropists have successful started universities before, e.g. Carnegie, Rockefeller, Vanderbilt. More recently, major institutes have been started, e.g. IAS, various think tanks. I agree there is a formidable “moat” of prestige that would be hard to overcome, but the prospect is not one to be ruled out entirely.
IIRC, OpenPhil are funding EAish academics to produce online courses. I think the old Peter Singer one on Coursera/EDx did pretty well.