• Tax filings indicate that business magnate Elon Musk is preparing to build a science, technology, engineering and mathematics-focused university in Austin, Texas.
• Musk has already invested $100 million in the school, which will start out with only 50 students.
• Future students will be selected based on merit, and if they show “proven academic and scientific potential.”

Exceedingly wealthy magnate Elon Musk is planning to start a science, technology, engineering and mathematics-focused (STEM) tertiary education institution in his home base of Austin, Texas, and has seeded the eventual university with a small donation of $100 million.

The information about the new university was drudged up through tax filings initially obtained by Bloomberg, according to which the as-of-yet-unnamed university will start out small, with around 50 students at first being instructed in classrooms located near or around Austin. The goal will be to grow over time.

“The school’s primary function will be the presentation of formal instruction in a curriculum by a regular faculty to a regularly enrolled student body in or near Austin, Taces, as well as using distance education technologies,” reads the filings.

Additionally, enrollment at the future school will be based on merit with it and its curriculum being specifically designed to meet the educational needs of those with “proven academic and scientific potential, who will thrive in a rigorous project-based curriculum.” Students will be partaking in hands-on learning, including experience in simulations, case studies, design projects and labs.

Selection of students will be based on academic curiosity, discipline, independence and innovation.

This all sounds like the X Corp version of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), long held as one of the world’s foremost universities for STEM subjects. Musk’s university will seek accreditation from the Georgia-based Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges, according to the filing, which also requested the school to be tax-exempt.

Musk will apparently be seeking to fund the university through donations, which will likely come from his charity The Foundation, into which he dumped $2.2 billion of Tesla stock into last year, according to Forbes. The tax filings also claim that the university intends to be tuition-free, so the small group of students will not have to pay to be educated at the school.

However it may also decide to charge tuition and instead offer scholarship opportunities based on needs.

Musk, who is estimated to be worth $243.5 billion, has a diverse portfolio of companies, from spaceships to brain implants and perhaps most infamously social media. This university will be his first serious turn towards education. His last foray was a small school he established for his own young children and the children of some Space X employees.

The Tesla CEO has also been for some time building a small community outside of Austin called Snailbrook, which will feature homes and a primary school for around 200 residents. The tax filings do not indicate when the STEM university will be built, or when it will begin opening its doors to students, but this will likely take a few years to come to fruition.