Elon Musk: Challenging the Status Quo

Elon Musk, 1971-present
Image credits: Wikipedia

The next installment of Top of the Class is the billionaire behind driverless cars and sending astronauts to Mars: Elon Musk. Musk’s journey to becoming one of the world’s richest individuals is a testament to his ingenuity, risk-taking, and relentless pursuit of progress. Musk has a talent for groundbreaking ventures and inflammatory tweets, which has made him a polarizing figure. Love him or hate him, he is redefining the boundaries of possibility, one audacious project—and tweetstorm—at a time.

Born in Pretoria, South Africa, in 1971, Musk’s education was fairly ordinary, although his early years were marred by years of bullying at school and a difficult relationship with his father at home. During this time, Musk developed a ruthless determination to get what he needed out of his formal education and to fill in the gaps outside of the classroom. This drove him to leave South Africa and live in the U.S., eventually becoming the industry-disrupting entrepreneur we know today. In Musk’s words, “I think it is possible for ordinary people to choose to be extraordinary.” We’ll explore how this remarkable decision played out in Musk's childhood, his university years, and his hands-on learning beyond school walls.

Elon Musk (five years old), stands on the left with his sister, Tosca, and his brother, Kimbal, in 1976
Image credits: Maye Musk via CNN

An early fascination with technology and space

From a very early age, Musk found an intellectual home in the realm of science fiction—a stark contrast to the turbulent dynamics of Pretoria Boys' High School, which Musk likened to a dystopian Lord of the Flies situation where children were encouraged to fight each other and even steal one another’s food. Musk was terrorized by his classmates, to the extent that he once had to spend a week in hospital after being pushed down a flight of stairs and kicked into a bloody pulp.

Four cousins: Russ Rive, Elon Musk (nine years old), Kimbal Musk, and Peter Rive, playing in the backyard of a Pretoria home, South Africa, c. 1980
Image credits: Maye Musk via Vanity Fair

Musk was also grappling with a strained relationship with his father at the time, so it’s no surprise that he found solace in the logical world of code. (By all his accounts, his father supported Musk financially, paying for his education and computers, but could not be relied upon for emotional stability.) At age twelve, Musk sold his first piece software to a local magazine for $500, called Blastar. It was a classic arcade-style game where players controlled a spaceship and fought off enemy invaders, which married Musk’s interests in tech and sci-fi.

Academically, Musk was a determined student, but did not stand out as a high performer, as you might expect—many of his teachers and classmates did not remember him well when interviewed by Musk’s biographers Ashlee Vance and Walter Isaacson. However, according to Musk, he showed less interest in the school subjects he deemed irrelevant to his overall career trajectory, and so it makes sense that Musk did not try to succeed in subjects like Afrikaans (even if it was interesting and beneficial to learn in its own right).

One-page magazine spread of twelve-year-old Elon Musk’s computer game, Blastar , December 1984
Image credits: Internet Archive

Considering Musk’s disregard for mainstream opinion early in life—ignoring the demands of school when it did not serve him and creating his own game from scratch—Blastar’s instructions serve as a manifesto for Musk’s lifelong preoccupation with humanity’s flourishing in the face of existential threats. When he was twelve, the threat was aliens and bullies; as an adult, it’s global warming and government oversight.

A quest for knowledge on his own terms

Musk moved to Canada at seventeen, where he enrolled at Queen’s University. He later transferred to the University of Pennsylvania and earned dual degrees in physics and economics. During his time at the University of Pennsylvania, Musk’s academic achievements were complemented by his entrepreneurial spirit as he was able to understand the course material by reading and didn’t need to attend classes religiously. He and a fellow student, Adeo Ressi, rented a 10-bedroom fraternity house, and turned it into a nightclub to cover their rent and tuition fees. After graduating from the University of Pennsylvania, Musk briefly pursued a Ph.D. in applied physics and materials science at Stanford University but left after just two days, driven by the allure of the burgeoning internet boom.

Elon Musk looking up at his college girlfriend, Jennifer Gwynne, at the University of Pennsylvania
Image credits: Marketwatch

Musk’s early departure from Stanford confirms the fact that he was more interested in living life on his terms than achieving conventional success. It also demonstrates Musk’s views towards education, or rather his perceived limits of formal education. Musk said later in life that “You don’t need college to learn stuff. Everything is available basically for free.” For Musk with his photographic memory, this comment makes a lot of sense: his education was focused on rote memorization, where the teachers and professors essentially transmitted information to students, which students then had to reproduce in essays and exams. So for Musk, it was not necessary to enlist a “go between” like a teacher. His days at Stanford could have been the most interesting and experimental, as he had finally reached a point in traditional education where he could set his own agenda, i.e. decide on an original thesis, but having spent most of his life in one form of formal education or another, Musk felt it was time to go out into the world and learn by doing, rather than consign himself to more years of study.

Breaking down barriers, both physical and metaphysical

Musk’s departure from Stanford led to the creation of his first company, Zip2, a city guide software for newspapers, which he sold for nearly $300 million in 1999. This gave him the capital to pursue more ambitious projects, like X.com, an online payment company that later became PayPal after a merger (not to be confused with the X.com of Twitter most of us know). PayPal revolutionized online payments and was sold to eBay for $1.5 billion in stock, further solidifying Musk’s status as a world-leading entrepreneur.

Peter Thiel and Elon Musk flash their PayPal credentials in 2000
Image credits: Associated Press

Musk continued to pioneer new frontiers across various industries. In 2002, he founded SpaceX with the goal of reducing space transportation costs and enabling the human colonization of Mars; in 2004, he revolutionized the automotive industry with Tesla Motors, developing cutting-edge electric vehicles that challenged the dominance of internal combustion engines; and in 2016, he extended he acquired SolarCity to create renewable energy solutions, which was founded by his cousins, Lyndon and Peter Rive. In 2022, as though sated by the physical world, Musk took the tech world by storm with his $44 billion acquisition of Twitter, aiming to transform it into a more open platform for free speech.

Still of Elon Musk’s cameo in Iron Man 2 alongside Robert Downey Jr. and Gwenyth Paltrow, filmed in 2009, one year after the first SpaceX spaceship reached orbit
Image credits: Still from the movie on YouTube

The importance of asking why

Musk’s professional achievements underscore the importance of curiosity. From his early days in Pretoria to his groundbreaking work with SpaceX and Tesla, Musk has consistently challenged the status quo and pushed the boundaries of what we thought possible. His education clearly certainly contributed to his achievements, however, Musk would be the first person to tell you that he found success due to the learnings outside the classroom, rather than inside.

Indeed, Musk often downplays the traditional education system and advocates for environments where children are free to learn the fundamentals, experiment, and question conventional wisdom. His own children attend Ad Astra, a school he founded that emphasizes critical thinking, problem-solving, and ethics over traditional grade levels and exams. He also invested $100m with The Foundation in 2024, to launch a university in Austin, Texas, to meet the educational needs of those with proven academic and scientific potential with a project-based curriculum.

Elon Musk holds his newborn, X Æ A-12, May 5, 2020
Image credits: Elon Musk via Twitter

While Musk’s thoughts often get distilled into soundbites, his views on education are nuanced and rooted in a deep love for humanity as well as a keen desire to make a personal difference in the world. He argues that while, “[a] degree might indicate talent… it is not a guarantee of it.” His companies like Tesla and SpaceX do not require a degree for employment, focusing instead on evidence of exceptional ability and problem-solving skills. “I ensure that Tesla recruiting does not have any requirements for a university degree because that’s absurd.”

As we explore the experiences and accomplishments of Elon Musk, we are reminded that education is not confined to the classroom but is a lifelong journey of discovery and innovation. Musk’s legacy continues to inspire future generations to dream big, work hard, and strive for a better future, echoing his belief that, “People should pursue what they're passionate about.” Musk’s ongoing interest in education, driven by his broader vision for the future of business and humanity, underscores his role not just as an entrepreneur, but as a catalyst for change in the modern era.

Sources

Ashlee Vance, Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future, 2015

David Brooks, “A Theory of Elon Musk's Maniacal Drive”, New York Times, Sept. 21, 2023.

Jill Lepore, “Elon Musk’s X Factor”, The New Yorker, July 26, 2023.

Rikki Schlott, “No wonder Elon Musk is starting his own school — higher education has lost public faith”, New York Post, Dec. 13, 2023.

Walter Isaacson, Elon Musk, 2023