Richard Branson, the billionaire founder of Virgin Group, has turned his money and focus toward a very personal new project: DyslexicU, the first free online university for dyslexic thinkers.
The inspiration? Branson himself has lived with dyslexia.
“I quit school at 15 because I was dyslexic. I didn’t know I was dyslexic. It hadn’t really been invented when I was at school,” he told NBC News in an exclusive interview this week. “And I went out into the outside world and learned my education from the University of Life ... and what I’ve spent my lifetime doing is trying to explain to families and kids that dyslexia is a superpower.”
Clearly it was for Branson.
The entrepreneur has had a career spanning over five decades with an empire that includes a record label, hotels, an airline, cruise ships and even his own space travel company.
“I just looked at blackboards and it was a mumbo jumbo to me, and I couldn’t work out what was going on. ... I would sit at the back of the class and my mind would be racing on things that I was interested in doing,” Branson said.
Branson said that while he wasn’t interested in school subjects such as geometry and applied mathematics, dyslexia helped him focus on his strengths. This allowed him to leave school and build the Virgin companies. And now, he wants dyslexic children pursue their dreams.
The university features two one-hour courses on entrepreneurship and a commencement speech by Branson highlighting other successful people who had dyslexia, like Muhammad Ali, Steve Jobs and Pablo Picasso.
“If you’re a dyslexic person, you can go on and take one of the courses and learn more about how incredibly successful dyslexic people have used their dyslexic thinking to turbocharge their careers,” Branson’s co-founder Kate Griggs told NBC News. “If you’re not dyslexic, you can go on and you can understand how dyslexics think and how you can develop those skills as well to be successful. Eventually it will be everything from banking to advertising and space science.”
One thing this university won't have? Exams.
“I think that exams are one of the worst things that were invented for schools. ... They’re just knowledge cramming, cramming machines into kids’ heads. Whereas schools should be places to go and find out what’s going on in the world,” Branson said.
For Branson, who has spent years on philanthropy through his foundation Virgin Unite to tackle the world’s challenges such as climate change and criminal justice reform, said the world’s most wealthy should do more to give back.
“Entrepreneurs who’ve also made money need to put pretty well all that money back into solving the problems of the world,” he said. “They need to use their entrepreneurial skills to try to solve the problems of the world.”
For now he wants to encourage parents of children with dyslexia to empower the next generation.
“Find out one thing that really interests them and let them put their energy behind that,” Branson said. “Don’t worry too much if your exam results are not, you know, top of the class. ... We are slightly different from others and we should be grateful for it.”
