Prince Harry set to back online degrees in life coaching via new mental health platform BetterUp University
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.
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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.
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 t0 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.
Instead, he appeared at a session called Beyond Burnout: Transforming C-Level Stress into Strength – to which tickets went for £1,200.
It is 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’.
