RICHARD EDEN: Prince Harry set to again on-line levels in life teaching
Academic success has not been a strong point for Prince Harry, who struggled at Eton College – leaving with a D in A-level geography and a B in art, bypassing university to head straight to the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst as an officer cadet.
It is a choice he says that he’s never regretted.
Yet despite his scholastic shortcomings, the Duke of Sussex is an integral part of a team creating its own ‘life-coaching’ university, I can disclose.
Harry is third in command of the US coaching platform BetterUp and was appointed the company’s ‘chief impact officer’ on a reported salary of more than $1 million in March 2021 to focus on ‘preventative mental fitness’.
The Silicon Valley mental health firm flogs its mentoring and counselling packages to companies across the globe and offers the chance to book time with the firm’s experts.
Prince Harry is helping a team create an online ‘life-coaching’ university
The Duke of Sussex (right) has plans to launch an academic institution called the BetterUp University which will offer online degrees in life coaching
Prince Harry marching during the Sovereign’s Parade in February 2007
But now I hear the company has plans to launch an academic institution called the BetterUp University which will offer degrees in life coaching online.
In newly filed papers, the San Francisco-based outfit has applied to the US Patent and Trademark Office to register its BetterUp University idea.
The application states the university will be ‘providing online educational forums in the field of life coaching, professional coaching, personal development coaching, and career development coaching.’
Despite the Prince declaring that he intended ‘to help create impact in people’s lives’ with his role at the coaching firm, he was criticised for not appearing in one of their free online livestreams at a San Francisco summit back in April.
Prince Harry saluting his father, then the Prince of Wales as he leaves Sandhurst Royal Military Academy in 2007, marking the completion of his training
Army Officer cadets in front of the Old College at Sandhurst. The Prince left Eton with a D in A-level geography and B in art, bypassing university to head straight to the Royal Military Academy
Instead, he appeared at a session called Beyond Burnout: Transforming C-Level Stress into Strength – to which tickets went for £1,200.
It is apparently a topic which the Duke says he can relate to – in a BetterUp discussion two years ago he admitted he experienced ‘burnout’ and previously felt he was ‘getting to the very end of everything that I had’.
Meanwhile, the Duke, 39, has spoken candidly on TV and in his 2023 memoir Spare about his mental health ‘unravelling’, lamenting the lack of ‘support’ he received from the Royal Family, sharing that he has been in therapy for four years ‘to heal myself from the past’.
Edited by Stephanie Takyi
