Tech billionaire Elon Musk has tried to revolutionize space travel, the electric vehicle industry, and social media.
Next up on his list? School.
Musk’s Texas-based private school—Ad Astra, meaning “to the stars” in Latin—has been in development for the past year. Last week, the state child-care regulator granted its permit for the site’s preschool to open in Bastrop, Texas, a city outside Austin that is home to a base for Musk’s company, SpaceX, Fortune reported.
The school’s website states that it is accepting applications for the current, 2024-25 academic year for both the preschool, open to children ages 3-6, and the lower-elementary school, open to children ages 6-9. It’s unclear if the lower elementary school is operational as of November.
With Ad Astra, Musk is part of a long line of tech entrepreneurs, athletes, musicians, and other celebrities who have started their own education ventures. Among the notable celebrity school founders: LeBron James, Pitbull, and Andre Agassi.
Musk himself opened a separate elementary school, also called Ad Astra, in Hawthorne, Calif., in 2014, which served his own children and several other children of SpaceX employees. Its only directive from Musk when it was founded a decade ago: “Make it great,” according to Josh Dahn, a founding teacher at the school.
After the California-based Ad Astra closed in 2020, faculty there launched an independent, online-only school called Astra Nova, New York Magazine reported.
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But now that the Tesla CEO has assumed a role in President-elect Donald Trump’s incoming administration, it’s an open question how Musk’s vision for the Texas school may fit into broader plans for K-12 policy.
Ad Astra did not respond to a request for comment sent through the school’s contact form.
Musk, who Trump tapped to co-lead a new federal “Department of Government Efficiency,” has voiced support for the future president’s goal of abolishing the U.S. Department of Education. And he has provocative views about pedagogy: Education should be “as close to a video game as possible,” Musk has said.
“He self-identifies as a disruptor,” said Jeffrey Henig, an emeritus professor of political science and education at Teachers College, Columbia University and an expert in education philanthropy.
Tax filings from Musk’s foundations show plans to expand Ad Astra into an elementary and secondary school, as well as a university, according to Fortune.
These plans come as Texas is poised to approve a policy that would direct public money to private schools—and as proposals to expand private school choice gain momentum at the federal level.
Still, Musk likely doesn’t envision the preschool as a money-making venture, said Josh Cowen, a professor of education policy at Michigan State University, who researches school choice.
“The margins on these schools are very thin, and Elon Musk is one of the richest men in the world,” he said.
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It’s more plausible that Musk is doing what most billionaires do when they get involved in education projects, Cowen said: aiming to promote their values in society by inculcating them in children.
Musk’s ideology is “fairly nebulous,” Cowen said. Still, he has offered his perspective on two issues that are polarizing in U.S. schools today: gender identity and how race and racism are portrayed in classrooms. Musk has criticized gender-affirming care and claimed that the current Education Department is “basically paying people to hate America.”
Even so, Ad Astra’s website doesn’t make mention of those issues.
The school’s approach is “centered around hands-on, project-based learning,” the site says, offering a “progressive learning environment that emphasizes the integration of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) into its curriculum.”
Early-elementary curriculum would cover math and science and global citizenship, as well as broader skills like critical thinking, curiosity, and problem-solving and building. Reading and literacy aren’t mentioned on Ad Astra’s site.
While the school’s application form notes that admissions are open to all children, it’s possible that Musk sees Ad Astra as a way to recruit and retain employees, said Henig.
“He’s a businessman who sees this as a way to create a benefit for his employees but have it subsidized by things like education savings accounts,” he said, referencing Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s proposal to give families tax dollars for private school expenses.
A bill to offer ESAs failed in the Texas legislature last year but may see enough legislative support to pass this session.
Like Cowen, though, Henig doesn’t see Ad Astra as a business venture meant to make money. If that’s the case, he said, Musk would likely start to open more locations.
Schools sponsored by wealthy industry leaders or celebrities are often “facilitated by a naive view of how easy it would be to outshine the competition,” Henig said.
“They start off with a lot of attention and then they kind of fade or drift when it turns out that these star-created schools don’t prove to be star education performers.”
