The Duke of Cumberland and uncle of Queen Victoria fiercely opposed the expansion of the Great Western Railways on the strange ground that its rumbling “would disturb Eton’s schoolboys.” Founded in 1440, “the nurse of England’s statesmen” has educated scores of Prime Ministers, world leaders and Nobel Laureates, and continues to dominate public life in the UK. The school confers a vast and unfair advantage to its alumni, over the alumni of even the best schools in the state system.

Billionaire Elon Musk has started a new experimental Astra Nova School which is billed as “the most exclusive school in the world”. Musk’s school is the online school on the campus of SpaceX. It is expected to produce billionaires. No surprise for guessing it! The “mercurial, man-child”, says his biographer Walter Isaacson, has “grandiose ambition and an ego to match.” As his money and power grow, Musk now frequently channels his inner Trump.

One of the most expensive secondary schools in the Swiss Alps charges 125,000 Euros per year. In these super elite schools, education is a sense of the way power works in institutions. They are of course intensely hierarchical where the status is marked by dress and form of address. But Musk and other tech billionaires are also building castles of a different kind. They have now entered universities with a mission to launch a war on ideas. Elite universities in the US will now become even more elitist while avenues for higher education are vanishing for the less privileged. The ship of fools doesn’t sink fast. Globally, schools, colleges and universities are proliferating. Boutique universities are minting money. But the internet is spreading a new kind of illiteracy. The reading habits of students have already atrophied online.

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It is a loss........

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