(The Lion) — Founded under the belief that politics should be kept out of the classroom to foster open inquiry, the University of Austin (UATX) was a natural to adopt merit-based admissions and grading.

“I always tell people that you can’t learn how to ride a bike if someone tells you that you can’t fall off,” UATX Provost Jacob Howland told The Lion about the performance-based model the university follows.

Instead of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies that have dominated academia, the university has implemented policies to reward merit, excellence and intelligence, also known as MEI.

“We look at DEI as total poison. I think it’s just toxic,” said Howland.

UATX’s MEI-based admissions process is unique, ignoring factors such as race, sex, sexual orientation, or political opinions. ​Instead, the university focuses on three criteria: academic achievement, leadership and creativity potential.

They don’t even keep statistics on race, said the provost.

With regard to academic achievement, the university considers standardized test scores, even as many other universities have abandoned such test scores. Howland estimates about 80% of colleges and universities no longer look at standardized testing for admissions.

“With regard to leadership and creativity, this is very important: We ask students to list no more than five extracurricular activities, and just tell us what they’re involved in,” said Howland.

Diversity of experience is more important to UATX than gender and race.

“So, we’ve managed to attract kids who are risk takers and also faculty who are risk takers as well. And like the students, the faculty, they’re really interested in teaching and learning,” said Howland.

Featured recently by the CBS News program 60 Minutes as an innovator in higher education, the network news show called UATX a “disruptor.”

UATX combines tradition and innovation, focusing on the intellectual heritage of Western civilization and applying those traditions to modern problems to produce the best students and teachers.

Students at UATX learn the foundations of the Western intellectual tradition by studying the Bible’s Genesis and Exodus narratives, as well as the Greek works of Thucydides, Herodotus and Aristotle, and the Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh.

But the curricula aren’t just wedded to the ancient past.

“Going back to the term we just completed, another course is called knowing, doing, making, wisdom…. [They studied] Karl Popper on the logic of scientific discovery, Matthew Crawford’s Shop Class as Soul Craft, [and] C.S. Lewis on The Abolition of Man,” said Howland.

The approach is intended to help students develop sound judgment and critical thinking skills, which are seen as essential for finding workable solutions to contemporary issues and repairing broken higher education institutions.

One of those problems is acute: Students in today’s colleges and universities can’t learn because they live in fear of expressing views that will earn them ridicule.

“And you know today, students are really in fear, in a lot of cases, about opening their mouths and saying something that other students or even professors might find objectionable for ideological reasons,” Howland told The Lion.

That’s why the university declares in its constitution that the school will be “champions [of] the pursuit of truth, scientific inquiry, freedom of conscience, and civil discourse, and that is independent of government, party, religious denomination and business interest in all matters.”