Minerva Project Overthrows Harvard?

Parents Forum
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<p>@Snarlatron, rather a fallacy, though? Many things which are ridiculed are not true. Truth is not a required characteristic of the ridiculed. </p>

<p>What makes this proposition a bad deal for prospective students? Let’s posit the students would be eligible for admission to Ivy League/elite US colleges on the basis of academics only. Off the top of my head:</p>

<p>1) For-profit status. Investors in this enterprise expect to receive interest on their investment. Thus, any surplus will not be accumulated to improve the institution over time, nor to guard against lean times. Trimming “expenses” will mean trimming academics. Has to, especially in a school. Caveat Emptor applies.</p>

<p>2) Lack of transparency. The supposed freedom from bureaucratic reporting means the student does without the sort of data published in the Common Data Set. No federal oversight. </p>

<p>2a) forswearing the use of standardized tests for admission. For the able student, there is no means to ascertain the quality of the student body. If the proprietary admissions procedures selects a capable student body, the test scores should be in line with those of students accepted to the likes of Harvard. If the test scores were not as impressive as the scores of the student bodies of elite universities, then, no, I wouldn’t leap to conclude Minerva’s student body was more capable. </p>

<p>3) faculty. Who will agree to work without the prospect of tenure, so long as other universities are offering it? What adult will agree to move house frequently? One could conjecture they’d be a series of short-term contracts, mostly retired professors who can afford to go without, some who want to live in a specific city for a while, and whomever else they can find. </p>

<p>As a side note, does anyone know whether the Olin College of Engineering still does not offer tenure? They were widely reported not to offer tenure at the time of their founding, but this listing (and others) details tenured and non-tenured professors: <a href=“http://profiles.asee.org/profiles/6227/screen/15[/url]”>http://profiles.asee.org/profiles/6227/screen/15&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;

<p>4) Personal connections (lack thereof). No alumni body. If the institution lasts more than 4 years, the alumni will still be scattered across the world. </p>

<p>A student who wins admission to Harvard (or similar) would likely also be in the running for significant merit scholarships, including named scholarships, at many prominent universities. In comparison to paying 1/2 the going full rate at Harvard (Minerva’s stated goal for “thousands”), the students would be well advised to compete for full-ride scholarships at state flagships. They’d have the “full experience” for much less money, the advantage of established alumni networks, and access to corporate recruiters coming to campus.</p>

<p>5) Not to be persnickety, but Minerva has not yet found anyone willing to pay tuition for what their offering. The students are sacrificing a year to four years of their lives, but their room and tuition are covered, according to The Atlantic.</p>

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<p>I find the courses themselves interesting, and for the right price I would be an instructor…</p>

<p>Maybe I missed it, but I am curious as to how you would teach laboratories in such a setup. Also, most high achieving science undergraduates get end up doing some kind of research in a lab, separate from the laboratory experience in a class. How is this going to be provided?</p>

<p>Also, as much as people claim that rising costs are the result of ‘administrative bloat’, the problem is not the salaries of high paid executives as much as student and professional support services. One goal is to have 2500 students per class. …have they planned for the kind of support such students would need as well as faculty support in that 28K price?</p>

<p>Tenure would be a big issue, as mentioned upthread. I imagine it might entice someone towards the end of a career. That said, tenure seems to be on the way out at most universities. Maybe not the elite ones that Minerva hopes to compete with, though. That would certainly be a selling point away from Minerva.</p>

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<p>Olin still does not offer tenure. Professors are there on multi-year contracts that can be renewed. </p>

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<p>I don’t understand the hatred. These are private individuals deciding to be educated the way they deem best. If it works for them, then bully for them. If it doesn’t, they can always get a grad degree later. I do sense some fear and insecurity, though. What is clear is that the current model in higher ed in the US has run its course, and you will see massive upheaval in the next 20 years.</p>

<p>People will always desire learning/improvement.
People will always desire skills in their employees.
People will always desire networks.
People will always desire a signalling mechanism.</p>

<p>However, that doesn’t mean that the way all that is carried out right now will be the way it’s carried out in the future.</p>

<p>It certainly isn’t done the same way all over the world now and wasn’t done the same way in the past (in the US or elsewhere). Those who don’t believe that are willfully blind and/or can’t think outside the box and/or haven’t read history and/or don’t have exposure to other cultures. Just my opinion.</p>

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<p>No need to be overly dramatic. “Hatred?” One can focus on the money spent, but the opportunity cost of turning down an established institution for an experimental, poorly-funded for-profit degree can be steep. </p>

<p>I would not be surprised to see institutional ratings in 100 years to remain largely the same as today’s, in line with past history.</p>

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<p>Is this going to be a research university? I saw no mention of it. Hard to believe it could become “elite” without the thing that makes a university elite. </p>

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<p>Changes happen slowly. Until they happen fast.</p>

<p>BTW, no one 100 years ago would have listed Duke or Dartmouth or Brown (or Rice, or WashU) as a top university (remember that the Ivy League didn’t exist). Few would have listed Stanford. MIT was seen as more of a trade school and the 2 preeminent research universities in MA were Harvard and Clark.</p>

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<p>^^^Incorrect, on almost all points.</p>

<p>In 1911, the federal government did rank the colleges. It’s known as the “Babcock Report.” <a href=“The feds tried to rate colleges in 1911. It was a disaster. - Vox”>The feds tried to rate colleges in 1911. It was a disaster. - Vox;

<p>The colleges were broken into four tiers. Tier I institutions include:</p>

<p>Brown
Dartmouth
Washington University
Duke (known in the report as "Trinity College (North Carolina), as it had not yet been renamed)
Rice did not appear, as it was founded in 1912.</p>

<p>In Massachusetts, the Tier I colleges were:</p>

<p>Amherst
Harvard
Mount Holyoke
MIT
Radcliffe
Smith
Tufts
Wellesley
Williams</p>

<p>Clark was not preeminent; it appears in the report as Tier II, the same level as Worcester Polytechnic Institute.</p>

<p><a href=“https://ia700504.us.archive.org/0/items/classificationof01unit/classificationof01unit.pdf[/url]”>https://ia700504.us.archive.org/0/items/classificationof01unit/classificationof01unit.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>For trivia buffs, it’s fascinating how stable the rankings have remained. There is interesting research on this point.</p>

<p>See, for example, Carloline Hoxby: <a href=“http://ideas.repec.org/a/aea/jecper/v23y2009i4p95-118.html[/url]”>http://ideas.repec.org/a/aea/jecper/v23y2009i4p95-118.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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<p>Again, why would the students with the highest aptitude choose a model which offers them so little in return, in comparison to the academic and social rewards they can reap from the established universities? Just uttering pronouncements of doom won’t do. </p>

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<p>@Periwinkle:</p>

<p>OK, point. I was thinking of another ranking from around 1900. Also, a little before that, in the late 19th century, Clark was a research powerhouse (just look at the number of PhDs it gave).</p>

<p>Finally, Trinity College (NC) was tier 2 (and only for recent graduates).</p>

<p>Duke and Swarthmore moved from Tier2 to Tier1.</p>

<p>Duke did it by targetting rich kids and aggressively giving out merit money to high-acheivers. Swarthmore revamped their curriculum mid-20th-century to make it more rigorous.</p>

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<p>Minerva is parasitic. It cannot exist without the current government-subsidized university structure that produces PhDs and supports research. it’s not even all that cheap. An in-state flagship costs less and offers more. </p>

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<p>

Same cd be said of LACs.</p>

<p>So let me get this straight: Minerva is parasitic bcs it accepts no direct gov’t funding, but “conventional” universities & LACs aren’t when they:</p>

<ul>
<li>receive gov’t subsidies in the form of non-profit status so they owe no taxes, even though they have billion dollar endowments and pay their presidents million dollar compensation pkgs</li>
</ul>

<p>-inflate their COA bcs pell grants and gov’t subsidized student loans are widely available to American students</p>

<ul>
<li>receive research grant money from federal agencies like the NSF and NEA</li>
</ul>

<p>

Instate flagship has IS prices only for state residents and does not offer the int’l campus rotation feature. Minerva serves a different market; it has a high fraction of int’l students. </p>

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<p>No, that’s not what I said. It’s parasitic because as a for-profit business, it keeps costs down by hiring what are essentially temp faculty whose development and careers have been sustained and trained previously by non-profit educational institutions, including LACs (many of whose graduates go on to get PhDs). You also are assuming that LAC faculty don’t do research and are not supported by their institutions to do so. That isn’t true.</p>

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<p>I agree with this. The Minerva founder is a salesman pushing a product. There are of course many problems and absurdities in higher ed, but the Minerva model is not going to solve them. </p>

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<p>Yes. If it’s essentially an extended study-abroad program with a heavy online component, then how is it going to pose a serious challenge to the four-year residential college model for domestic students? </p>

<p>I have no issue with Minerva existing. I just find the exaggerated marketing claims of its founder silly.It’s not going to replace the Amhersts and Pomonas and Harvards of this world.</p>

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<p>

And how does that differ from the non-profits increasingly using adjunct faculty? Or private companies hiring staff and not giving them jobs for life? </p>

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<p>Minerva claims to be revolutionizing higher ed when it is basically ramping up the very elements that make higher ed require a revolution. Minerva is complicit in the trends it claims to be challenging.</p>

<p>I believe that the loss of institutional investment in people is a bad thing in every area of human endeavor. I’d have less of a problem with Minerva if its founders would just admit that they wants to make a buck off a speculative project, and dropped all the highfalutin transformational BS.</p>

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<p>What about labs? They offer majors in the natural sciences, after all… And what about professors/lab assistants on-campus (such as it is) to help with the labs?
I assume there will be RAs and program directors and mental health and student support services… (just look at College Life posts to see why they’re necessary). After all, this new revolutionary college doesn’t negate the fact that these are normal teens just like the ones going to other colleges- and these kids will apparently be migrating countries every six months.
A college run by administrators doesn’t do much for the students themselves.</p>

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<p>@Hannahbanana69, at present there are only 33 students. I don’t have the impression the budget will include support for student support services. </p>

<p>@GMTPlus7, #30,

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<p>To be precise, Minerva does not offer the international campus rotation feature at this point in time. It reminds me of the New York private, for-profit school, Avenues, which also claims to be on the way to offering multiple international campuses. Obviously, international exposure has been shown to appeal to prospective customers. Will agencies which provide accreditation travel to suss out each campus every year or so for Minerva?</p>

<p>I would say that it does not yet have a market, as no one is yet paying tuition or rooming fees. </p>

<p>I am intrigued by the declaration that the school will not do the “freshman year” courses, with the attitude, “do that on your own time.” I’m not inclined to take that as an indication of the frightfully, amazingly, advanced nature of its courses.</p>

<p>I’m more inclined to wonder if research is showing that there is a literacy-skills floor for students who can profitably interact with online instruction. That would explain the focus on “Harvard” type students; if you could fill your school with kids with lots of APs, who’ve covered freshman year in high school already, you wouldn’t have to worry about their dropping out due to academic challenges.</p>

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<p>@Periwinkle: Is that meant to be a good thing? It’s not even neutral. I don’t care how forward-thinking or mature or advanced these kids are- they’re teenagers. I sure hope they’re getting SOME kind of guidance and support because reading the articles, this place sounds COLD. </p>