IF JIMMY IOVINE has a trademark, it’s his hat. For decades, the record producer turned label boss turned headphones magnate turned all-around music-biz oracle has rarely appeared in public without something atop his head, be it a casual wintry wool knit number or a navy blue baseball cap featuring the logo of his multi-billion-dollar corporation, Beats. What Steve Jobs was to mock turtlenecks or Phil Knight is to the swoosh, Iovine is to hats. And yet, it was still slightly incongruous to see him last May, standing at a podium in front of the University of Southern California’s graduating class of 2013, sporting a poofy doctoral tam with a gold tassel dangling from its side.

Iovine was there to deliver USC’s commencement speech, in which he regaled the graduates with a story about making tea for John Lennon and quoted lines from his “favorite poet,” R. Kelly. But he also took the opportunity to promote his latest project: an interdisciplinary program called the USC Jimmy Iovine and Andre Young Academy for Arts, Technology and the Business of Innovation. A joint venture between Iovine and his business partner, Andre Young—better known as the hip-hop super-producer Dr. Dre—the academy, which matriculated its inaugural 31-member freshman class in August, features a curriculum that weds its three titular disciplines (art, tech and commerce) in a way that befits the current cultural landscape. They want to create a dream factory, Iovine said in his speech, that will “inspire, challenge, and satisfy the curiosity of the next wave of game-changers.”

Iovine and Dre know about changing the game. For two and a half decades, Iovine, 61, was the head of Interscope Records (later Interscope Geffen A&M), where he helped oversee the careers of U2, Lady Gaga, Gwen Stefani and the Black Eyed Peas. Dr. Dre, 49, is a legendary producer with six Grammys and hundreds of millions in sales to his name, who has helped guide proteges such as Snoop Dogg, 50 Cent and Eminem. Together, they launched their company, Beats Electronics, in 2008, building it from a start-up headphone manufacturer with cool celebrity endorsements into a technology brand so lucrative that Apple recently paid $3 billion for it. Now Dre and Iovine are using $70 million to fund their school.

As Iovine explains it, the school is as much an investment in their own future as it is philanthropy. “We wanted to build a school that we feel is what the entertainment industry needs right now,” he says. “There’s a new kid in town, and he’s brought up on an iPad from one and a half years old. But the problem with some of the companies up north [in Silicon Valley] is that they really are culturally inept. I’ve been shocked at the different species in Northern and Southern California—we don’t even speak the same language. The kid who’s going to have an advantage in the entertainment industry today is the kid who speaks both languages: technology and liberal arts. That’s what this school is about.

“The problem with the school system is that a lot of it’s cookie-cutter,” he adds, “so what we’re trying to do is disrupt it a bit.”