Educational Leadership

One key question that surfaced during the Monday meeting boiled down to this: What type of student does this new college—referred to at this point by the place-holder name, “New Educational Institution,” or NEI—intend to serve?

Several recent efforts to start experimental colleges from scratch have aimed squarely at students with high standardized test scores and strong academic preparation. That’s the case, for instance, for Minerva Project, a private institution that uses a home-grown online teaching system and has a hybrid for-profit and nonprofit funding model, as well as the budding University of Austin, a startup college in Texas aimed at ensuring more viewpoint diversity.

Minerva’s model sounds like it was dreamed up by friends at a bar talking about what they would do if they could create a university from scratch

Every day the demand for an American higher education increases worldwide. But one of the crucial blocks to achieving a degree is the costly price. The Minerva Project was started in 2012 to provide an elite Ivy League education for a fraction of the price. I talked to Ben Nelson, the Founder, Chairman, and CEO of Minerva about his innovative company. In addition to having a distinguished faculty and novel use of technology (classes are offered through webinars), the school takes a daring approach to pedagogy that emphasizes building leadership through the development of vital skill sets. In this interview, Nelson, who has a very impressive track record of tech business projects prior to this endeavor, speaks with me about the virtues of the Minerva system and how its experiential immersion compares to more traditional education. He also talks about where he thinks the future of web education is heading. Whatever one thinks about online education, there is no question that Minerva is pioneering and rethinking the wheel of academics in ways that could boldly impact the affordability, accessibility, and quality of US higher education.