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It sounds like the college is residential but courses are online. Is that accurate? Is this something temporary for their first couple of cohorts, or is this t

by nmrm2 12y ago

It sounds like the college is residential but courses are online. Is that accurate? Is this something temporary for their first couple of cohorts, or is this the intended setup? Interesting in any case. It's also worth noting that this is cheaper than private liberal arts colleges, but actually much more expensive than regional state universities, and even more expensive than some flagships (assuming in-state tuition and average scholarship). Which is also interesting. edit: based on the article, the target demographic seems to be high-quality foreign students. Which, again, is really interesting because that's a very different target demographic than most liberal arts colleges. edit: I'll also be curious to see whether these sorts of institutions can get students into top PhD programs or MD programs, which tend to require lots of experiences that are really difficult to provide without physical space and tenured faculty.

deleted 12y ago
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barry-cotter 12y ago
Residential college with online courses does seem to be the plan, with the city of residence changing year to year. >Each year, according to Minerva’s plan, they’ll attend university in a different place, so that after four years they’ll have the kind of international experience that other universities advertise but can rarely deliver. By 2016, Berlin and Buenos Aires campuses will have opened. Likely future cities include Mumbai, Hong Kong, New York, and London. Students will live in dorms with two-person rooms and a communal kitchen. They’ll also take part in field trips organized by Minerva, such as a tour of Alcatraz with a prison psychologist. Minerva will maintain almost no facilities other than the dorm itself—no library, no dining hall, no gym—and students will use city parks and recreation centers, as well as other local cultural resources, for their extracurricular activities. Re: price. They don't intend to compete with state flagships, but with liberal arts colleges. Which state flagships are impressive without reference to programme? I'm not American but I do spend far too much time reading American stuff and my impression would be that the only public universities in the US that are vaguely comparable to HYPS are U Michigan and UC Berkeley, maybe Georgia Tech, which is itself very far behind the top four CS schools, MIT,CMU, Berkeley and Stanford. Being better than Amherst may be an ambitious goal for Minerva's second decade but being better than a respectable college with no real national brand seems doable.
- nmrm2 12y ago
  > no library, no dining hall, no gym—and students will use city parks and recreation centers, as well as other local cultural resources, for their extracurricular activities. I commented on another article that this is an interesting solution -- externalizing certain costs of higher ed. It's a very effective strategy, and even makes sense on the large scale (civilization-wide) for everything except libraries, probably. > They don't intend to compete with state flagships, but with liberal arts colleges. Right. That's why I think it's interesting. They don't compete on price with larger and/or state schools, but do compete on methodology. They don't compete on methodology with (most) liberal arts colleges, but do compete on price. It's a unique niche -- students who value liberal arts and can afford college but cannot afford/don't want to pay for a traditional liberal arts education. I'm not surprised they're initially targeting foreign students, seems like a pretty small market in the US at the moment. E.g. most students who are inclined to attend a liberal arts college are also inclined to prefer physical presence of instructors. > Which state flagships are impressive without reference to programme? State universities with a wide range of very strong programs: Illinois, Texas-Austin, Michigan, Washington, Wisconsin, N Carolina (Chapel Hill), and many others. All of these schools out-rank Harvard in CS, for instance. > but being better than a respectable college with no real national brand seems doable. All of the universities mentioned above have national and international brands in several areas (I think my list is CS-skewed). I don't think Minerva will ever really compete with these schools, even if it is widely successful. WRT regional colleges: I think that physical presence of full-time faculty is a pretty substantial benefit. You'd need higher-quality, full time faculty and really good technology to compete with even a mediocre but physically present tenured faculty member (tenure as a signal for "has experience teaching" + not ad junct/over-worked). For this reason, I think that online programs which aim to compete on price without sacrificing quality face a pretty substantial HR problem. Training isn't enough -- faculty have to be available for office hours, need time to develop new curricula, etc.. This is probably not possible without hiring high-quality faculty as full-time employees. As "coast-snobby" as academics can be (actually, this isn't really true, but accepting the article's premise...), I don't think anyone would turn down a tenured position in Nowhere, Indiana in favor of teaching online courses, especially if the work is contract-based. That said, it's always possible to compete with larger universities if you define your scope. You'll see this in the recruiting materials of any university -- they choose a set of things they're really good at, and say "we're the best (small print: at the combination of a,b,c,x,y, and z). E.g. "student travel" is a metric used by Minerva.

by nmrm2 12y ago

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

barry-cotter 12y ago

Residential college with online courses does seem to be the plan, with the city of residence changing year to year. >Each year, according to Minerva’s plan, they’ll attend university in a different place, so that after four years they’ll have the kind of international experience that other universities advertise but can rarely deliver. By 2016, Berlin and Buenos Aires campuses will have opened. Likely future cities include Mumbai, Hong Kong, New York, and London. Students will live in dorms with two-person rooms and a communal kitchen. They’ll also take part in field trips organized by Minerva, such as a tour of Alcatraz with a prison psychologist. Minerva will maintain almost no facilities other than the dorm itself—no library, no dining hall, no gym—and students will use city parks and recreation centers, as well as other local cultural resources, for their extracurricular activities. Re: price. They don't intend to compete with state flagships, but with liberal arts colleges. Which state flagships are impressive without reference to programme? I'm not American but I do spend far too much time reading American stuff and my impression would be that the only public universities in the US that are vaguely comparable to HYPS are U Michigan and UC Berkeley, maybe Georgia Tech, which is itself very far behind the top four CS schools, MIT,CMU, Berkeley and Stanford. Being better than Amherst may be an ambitious goal for Minerva's second decade but being better than a respectable college with no real national brand seems doable.

nmrm2 12y ago
> no library, no dining hall, no gym—and students will use city parks and recreation centers, as well as other local cultural resources, for their extracurricular activities. I commented on another article that this is an interesting solution -- externalizing certain costs of higher ed. It's a very effective strategy, and even makes sense on the large scale (civilization-wide) for everything except libraries, probably. > They don't intend to compete with state flagships, but with liberal arts colleges. Right. That's why I think it's interesting. They don't compete on price with larger and/or state schools, but do compete on methodology. They don't compete on methodology with (most) liberal arts colleges, but do compete on price. It's a unique niche -- students who value liberal arts and can afford college but cannot afford/don't want to pay for a traditional liberal arts education. I'm not surprised they're initially targeting foreign students, seems like a pretty small market in the US at the moment. E.g. most students who are inclined to attend a liberal arts college are also inclined to prefer physical presence of instructors. > Which state flagships are impressive without reference to programme? State universities with a wide range of very strong programs: Illinois, Texas-Austin, Michigan, Washington, Wisconsin, N Carolina (Chapel Hill), and many others. All of these schools out-rank Harvard in CS, for instance. > but being better than a respectable college with no real national brand seems doable. All of the universities mentioned above have national and international brands in several areas (I think my list is CS-skewed). I don't think Minerva will ever really compete with these schools, even if it is widely successful. WRT regional colleges: I think that physical presence of full-time faculty is a pretty substantial benefit. You'd need higher-quality, full time faculty and really good technology to compete with even a mediocre but physically present tenured faculty member (tenure as a signal for "has experience teaching" + not ad junct/over-worked). For this reason, I think that online programs which aim to compete on price without sacrificing quality face a pretty substantial HR problem. Training isn't enough -- faculty have to be available for office hours, need time to develop new curricula, etc.. This is probably not possible without hiring high-quality faculty as full-time employees. As "coast-snobby" as academics can be (actually, this isn't really true, but accepting the article's premise...), I don't think anyone would turn down a tenured position in Nowhere, Indiana in favor of teaching online courses, especially if the work is contract-based. That said, it's always possible to compete with larger universities if you define your scope. You'll see this in the recruiting materials of any university -- they choose a set of things they're really good at, and say "we're the best (small print: at the combination of a,b,c,x,y, and z). E.g. "student travel" is a metric used by Minerva.