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> 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 extracurricul

by 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.

barry-cotter 12y ago
Point on public universities. I just don't know enough about the US. >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. Most Physics postdocs don't get faculty jobs. Neither do most Chemistry or Biology ones. The Arts have an equally massive over supply of wannabe academics. Math,CS, Economics,Finance,Accounting all of these have lovely alternatives to teaching but lots of people like teaching as well. As you pointed out the coast snobbery is bullshit. Academics move anywhere for tenure or a chance at tenure. But Minerva will take you if you're close enough to the right timezone and soon they'll all be close enough. WGU has shown that all online faculty can work though they don't have an all seminar system. I don't know, it seems close enough to the Oxford/Cambridge tutorial system that it can work given cheap enough inputs, easily. Live in Thailand, teach students in Hong Kong, live in Coast Rica, teach in San Francisco. And the star faculty can't last. But you can get really good adjuncts without being as attractive locationwise as Minerva. Re:curriculum, office hours, remember, Minerva can actually tell their staff what to do. I don't think there's much actual disagreement here,I'm only slightly more optimistic than you, eh?
- nmrm2 12y ago
  It's not that the raw labor doesn't exist, it's that this labor -- esp in STEM -- has other job opportunities and doesn't need to teach. Given the choice, most would leave academia rather than live on scraps once they hit their late 20s/early 30s. And although there isn't coast snobbery, I don't think expecting teaching faculty to relocate to a cheaper country is a realistic solution -- especially if there's no tenure and the pay is below industry average! > Re:curriculum, office hours, remember, Minerva can actually tell their staff what to do. Right, but (at least ostensibly) they can't compel their staff to do that for free. If a staff member is being paid way below what they could make in industry and isn't even on a tenure track, they have absolutely no incentive to work hard. Nor should they work hard, at anything other than getting out of an exploitative relationship with their employer. It's easier to take advantage of people in the humanities, but then, taking advantage of instructional staff doesn't exactly create a convivial learning environment. > given cheap enough inputs, easily I guess that's really the thing -- I think for something like Minerva to really work they need full time, well-paid faculty. And without federal aid, that means they'll probably have trouble competing with regional state universities (without sacrificing quality, which kills to whole Minerva model). Otherwise high-quality learning environments are impossible to build and maintain. > but lots of people like teaching as well. One model could be finding people who have moved on to industry but still want to teach a course or two a semester. It might be possible to make this work. BUT -- that's not a new model! Lots of colleges and universities take this approach, and it's pretty well-understood by pretty much everyone that this is a non-optimal situation. Even very bright people fail at the "teach after work" thing. It's just not possible to go as deeply as you would like without an hour or two before and after lectures to really prepare for the lecture itself well and then wind down/self-assess. Higher Ed needs to come to terms with the fact that great -- or even half-decent -- instruction is a full-time job. > I don't think there's much actual disagreement here,I'm only slightly more optimistic than you, eh? No, there's no disagreement at all :-). I'm posing possible problems and you're suggesting reasons they're not problems or suggesting solutions. It's a true dialog :-)

by nmrm2 12y ago

barry-cotter 12y ago

Point on public universities. I just don't know enough about the US. >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. Most Physics postdocs don't get faculty jobs. Neither do most Chemistry or Biology ones. The Arts have an equally massive over supply of wannabe academics. Math,CS, Economics,Finance,Accounting all of these have lovely alternatives to teaching but lots of people like teaching as well. As you pointed out the coast snobbery is bullshit. Academics move anywhere for tenure or a chance at tenure. But Minerva will take you if you're close enough to the right timezone and soon they'll all be close enough. WGU has shown that all online faculty can work though they don't have an all seminar system. I don't know, it seems close enough to the Oxford/Cambridge tutorial system that it can work given cheap enough inputs, easily. Live in Thailand, teach students in Hong Kong, live in Coast Rica, teach in San Francisco. And the star faculty can't last. But you can get really good adjuncts without being as attractive locationwise as Minerva. Re:curriculum, office hours, remember, Minerva can actually tell their staff what to do. I don't think there's much actual disagreement here,I'm only slightly more optimistic than you, eh?

nmrm2 12y ago
It's not that the raw labor doesn't exist, it's that this labor -- esp in STEM -- has other job opportunities and doesn't need to teach. Given the choice, most would leave academia rather than live on scraps once they hit their late 20s/early 30s. And although there isn't coast snobbery, I don't think expecting teaching faculty to relocate to a cheaper country is a realistic solution -- especially if there's no tenure and the pay is below industry average! > Re:curriculum, office hours, remember, Minerva can actually tell their staff what to do. Right, but (at least ostensibly) they can't compel their staff to do that for free. If a staff member is being paid way below what they could make in industry and isn't even on a tenure track, they have absolutely no incentive to work hard. Nor should they work hard, at anything other than getting out of an exploitative relationship with their employer. It's easier to take advantage of people in the humanities, but then, taking advantage of instructional staff doesn't exactly create a convivial learning environment. > given cheap enough inputs, easily I guess that's really the thing -- I think for something like Minerva to really work they need full time, well-paid faculty. And without federal aid, that means they'll probably have trouble competing with regional state universities (without sacrificing quality, which kills to whole Minerva model). Otherwise high-quality learning environments are impossible to build and maintain. > but lots of people like teaching as well. One model could be finding people who have moved on to industry but still want to teach a course or two a semester. It might be possible to make this work. BUT -- that's not a new model! Lots of colleges and universities take this approach, and it's pretty well-understood by pretty much everyone that this is a non-optimal situation. Even very bright people fail at the "teach after work" thing. It's just not possible to go as deeply as you would like without an hour or two before and after lectures to really prepare for the lecture itself well and then wind down/self-assess. Higher Ed needs to come to terms with the fact that great -- or even half-decent -- instruction is a full-time job. > I don't think there's much actual disagreement here,I'm only slightly more optimistic than you, eh? No, there's no disagreement at all :-). I'm posing possible problems and you're suggesting reasons they're not problems or suggesting solutions. It's a true dialog :-)