The fact that it never mentions Israel, Palestine, or Iran does slightly give the article the feel of a game of taboo. It might not be the immediate cause of the downfall, but it's a factor. UATX was cofounded by Bari Weiss, who founded The Free Press before being hired to run CBS News (into the ground). FP, like Tablet Magazine, Quillette, and Spiked!, were part of a new wave of―to go back to that word―heterodox media outlets that promised to host lively debate and challenge stale liberal pieties. But since 10/7/23 and the start of the Gaza War, they've shown less interest in challenging orthodoxy than imposing one, and a rather extreme one at that. It tends to discredit the whole enterprise.
The other thing to look at is that, just like Rome, academia wasn't built in a day. Oxford University is over 900 years old. Harvard already had moss on its foundations when the Declaration of Independence was signed. Some of these schools have indeed squandered their integrity and reputation in recent years, among other problems. But it took a lot of patient effort to get them to where they were at their heights. It's not likely to be matched by pundits and investors with an ax to grind.
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When it was first launched the University of Austin sounded like a solution to the 'woke' craze that had infected the Ivy League and most other universities. As I understood it at the time UATX had some serious faculty members with good reputations who had been invited to legitimize the school. Here we are years later and the school still isn't credentialed to offer degrees and many of the initial staff have gone because they didn't pass the purity tests. Simply having a teaching staff made up of ideological conservatives won't benefit the students and nor will not offering degree programs. Of course, the advantage for students is that the tuition is free these first four years..
Dating back nearly a thousand years Oxford was originally a religious institution since there wasn't much science being done in medieval times and most of the books available were still being transcribed and illuminated by monks. Times have definitely changed since then but the fact is that since progressive terms like 'Intersectionality' and 'identity politics' have overtaken the most respected institutions the quality of the studies has dropped - hopefully not in the scientific fields but the trend has tended to spread. Harvard, has also lost much of the respect it earned over the years becoming radical leftists en mass. You're right about the having squandered their integrity and reputation - it will take major effort to effect any change.
I found a website called 'The New Inquiry' that has a piece about the University of Austin TX (actually located in Dallas). I won't blame you for not reading all of it but it is pretty funny. Could any of this be a tax writeoff for the billionaires who funded the place?
https://thenewinquiry.com/an-american-education-notes-from-uatx/
Having a teaching staff made up of ideological conservatives allows a few conservatives to claim that they're teaching at the college level. Are they, though? A lot of it seems more like a walking, talking op-ed. Especially since, as you note, they're not accredited. There has been an unfortunate tendency for academia to push out anyone who doesn't follow the far left line. You can see why conservatives wanted to start their own institution. But if you're going to try to save higher ed, you need a larger contingent of people who know what they're talking about.
It's true that there wasn't much science being conducted in Medieval Europe. That would start to change in the fifteenth century, with classical science being rediscovered and then-contemporaries wanting to build on the work of those who had come before them. But even then it would take its time spreading to England. One hopes that Oxford maintains its current science department and regains a hold of the humanities. Harvard had been associated with aristocratic posters for quite some time.
The New Inquiry article does seem to have a humorous point of view. More about that later.
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