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Inside Minerva, a Silicon Valley Bid To Start an Elite College Online
An anonymous reader writes with this article about The Minerva Project, a for-profit company now backed with more than $95 million from Silicon Valley venture-capital firms. Its goal is both audacious and unprecedented in the recent history of higher education: to build a name-brand, elite, liberal-arts-focused university that would cost about half of what Ivy League institutions charge. There's no campus, and all the classes take place online, but the students all live near each other in San Francisco. As small liberal-arts colleges like Sweet Briar shut down, is this campusless college the future?
Why should the students all live in San Francisco if it's an -online- college? Also, would be nice to have an article that isn't behind a paywall.
If I'm forced to live in San Fran, my room and board is going to cost more than if I had gone to a normal college.
The people you meet in college are similar to goodwill in accounting.
Online classes follow the in person paradigm: lecture and then homework. Paying attention to video lectures on a computer is just impossible for me. There is no interaction - at least in an in-person lecture, the lecturer will ask questions or call on you.
And then, getting feedback is difficult. My biggest bone to pick with Coursera is that you cannot discuss answers to homework or test questions.
In one class, I got all the practice problems correct but on the exam, I couldn't get the correct answer - even after my 4 tries allowed. Others had the same problem and others didn't. Where did we go wrong? To this day, I do not know.
If I couldn't get the exam problem correct, then I don't think I understood the concept.
And then there are the snarky comments like, "You don't belong here!".
After reporting it, nothing was done. I assumed that it must have been a TA that posted it. A snarky TA?
Never happens! /s
I have taken other online classes and they just don't cut it. Nothing beats having a real live person teach, for me anyway. I need that human contact.
How do create an "elite" college from nothing?
Isn't that officious title something a college has to earn?
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
I will never trust for-profit educational institutions:
For-Profit Colleges Under Investigation
Corinthian Colleges Employee: âoeWe Work For The Biggest Scam Company In The World"
Screw U: How For-Profit Colleges Rip You Off
How For-Profit Colleges Target Military Veterans (and Your Tax Dollars)
The only real difference between an "elite" college and another one is reputation. They have more money and oftentimes more famous faculty and students, but these things just come as a result of the famous name. So how do you get the name? Mostly by being old. Strike against Minerva there... I was going to do this whole contrived "three strikes" metaphor, but this just isn't necessary: Minerva is for-profit, that's really all you need to know to see that this is another diploma mill. You'd have a better chance of your degree meaning something if you got it from Udacity. They don't offer full degrees, of course, but maybe some day?
I'm not sure if the people who try things like this are stupid, or think that everyone else is stupid.
College is not the equivalent of training. It is an experience that transforms people during a period of time when they are still able to be transformed. Some of that is about learning specific things that you will need later. A lot more is about the ability to train yourself to learn specific things that you may never need later - so the training is the valuable thing, not the knowledge. More is about learning how to take on experiences, but in a sandbox environment, trying things that you could not easily do elsewhere. Getting involved in clubs and activities. Being a DJ on a radio station. Learning how to live with others in close quarters. Learning how to both succeed and to fail.
Coupled with that is the exposure to people who are not you. Creatively mixing your thoughts with others in a relaxed, informal setting. Broadening your horizons. Still in a sandbox though, because you're going to screw up. You're going to piss people off. You're going to make mistakes.
I still remember the lesson I learned in my "contract negotiation" class, when my negotiating team was up against a team made up mostly of hockey players. My team, representing "labor", with one older guy on it who probably was in a union, decided that it would be a good strategy to play hardball with the other team ("management") because the older guy surmised that the hockey players could not afford to come to a stalemate because a failing grade would bounce them off the team. The strategy worked, but I was disgusted with the tactic, so I wrote a paper outlining the problems with this negotiating approach.
That sandbox is the part of college that is the most expensive. I'd guess that it costs more than half of the entire cost of the "education". That means this for-profit company is trying to take advantage of people who naively believe that "college" is just about a credential, a piece of paper that says you met a minimum set of requirements. An online "college" can not offer most of what a campus-based college offers. It can only offer the "training" part, plus maybe a little of the "learning how to learn" part.
The dotcom era had Pets.com and the sock puppet
The Web 2.0 bubble will have these guys.
Nicely put, but this isn't the Web 2.0 bubble, this is the tuition bubble. Universities today (and a few students) seem to think it appropriate to charge $100k in tuition for degrees that in no way help you get a job after graduation, just make you a "well rounded individual". There have always been schools like that, and they're appropriate for trust fund babies who will inherit Daddy's business, but most people need an actual job.
What most students (and parents, and potential employers) expect from a university is an affordable program that gives you the skills to begin a professional career upon graduation, or leads directly to law or med school (or possibly an MBA). Some "well rounded individual" along the way isn't bad, but the focus needs to be a degree that employers want, with training in professional/engineering skills that make you trained for the jobs you'll apply for.
The vast gap between what Universities do right now, and what (most) people want them to do, along with the unbelievably high tuition (and vast numbers of $300k administrative jobs at universities, while tenure stops being offered to actual professors) is a very painful economic bubble, one long overdue for popping.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
This is not really a purely online college, as the poster describes. It's an interesting mix between online and offline: all the students are supposed to live together; they do their classes on computers. The physical location can change annually too. The Atlantic had a better article about Minerva a couple of months ago, and it's not behind a paywall: http://www.theatlantic.com/fea... What's really interesting is the instant and continuous feedback from the professor described here as the Minerva method. It sounds like truly scientific learning, a much better technique than the big lecture hall format, with students zoning out half the time.
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simple economics drives the explosion of tuition, and almost nothing else.
once the government started handing out cheap, plentiful money to students in the form of loans and grants, the universities have every incentive to capture it all, plus more from mom and dad, if possible.
never bring a twinkie to a food fight.
I could call that an "Elite" college...
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
simple economics drives the explosion of tuition, and almost nothing else.
once the government started handing out cheap, plentiful money to students in the form of loans and grants, the universities have every incentive to capture it all, plus more from mom and dad, if possible.
Except that has absolutely nothing to do with why tuition is rising.
They charge whatever people are willing to pay.
Choosing worthless and overpriced degrees is the responsibility of students and parents, not of universities.
The bubble will pop when students come to their senses. Until then, it remains worthwhile to charge inflated amounts for useless degrees.
The highest reasonable price would be that of a cheap community college. The price of an Ivy League is due to the value of the networking (both your peers, instructors and alumni).
I don't think the distinction you're making is as bright of a line as many people wish it were.
When you think of "for profit" college, do you think of the motivations? The governance? The educational results?
I look at "normal" colleges and I see many examples of
- bad motivations: if you don't think "normal" colleges aren't motivated by the wrong things, look at how much money gets pumped into athletics programs. look at how much money goes to administrative stafff. look at how much money goes to building lavish student unions, extra rec facilities, and all kinds of other things that aren't really related to the "stated" mission of the university. instead, they're related to attracting student enrollment with candy; attracting not the top of the intellectual pyramid, but the broad base, with bread and circuses...
- bad governance. University administration and leadership live like royalty in some places. In my humble state the university chancellor is apparently forcing campus cops to be his personal chauffer. The higher ed system in this state badly misdirects state funds, over and over, and is never held accountable.
- bad outcomes: plenty of people coming out of "normal" universities with toy degrees that are unemployable, and worse, really have no insight or understanding into anything worthwhile... and yet are saddled with plenty of debt.
Private universities are a response to current realities: many low-risk jobs require a paper degree, but no actual skills. Many traditional universities are needlessly stupid and expensive if all you want is that paper. And there is plenty of free money to go around, irrespective of merit.
I agree that for-profit diploma mills are probably a net negative. My point is that "normal" universities, in broad strokes, may not be any better.
My opinions are my own, and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.
"We can have X without physically-necessary-for-it-to-work Y!"
I'm not saying that for-profit universities are bad because they seek a profit. But there is an undeniable trend: For-profit colleges are worse than non-profit colleges by almost every metric.
Motivations: Yes, some non-profit universities are spending enormous amounts of money on sports, but sports spending is an investment that returns profits that are used for education. For-profit schools, on the other hand, spend more than $400,000 a day on ads while downsizing their teaching staff.
Governance: Yes, another legitimate gripe with non-profit universities. But once again, for-profit universities do it worse. Read the consumerist link I posted earlier. Widepsread misrepresentation of graduation and placement rates. Falsification of grades to prevent students from failing out. Termination of faculty members that failed too many students.
Outcomes: Yep, there are lots of recent graduates of non-profit universities who are jobless. But how many of them went to universities that have campuses with 0% graduation rates? You have to wonder what they point of a university is when it fails to graduate any students. There's also the fact that many for-profit colleges are charging $20,000 - $30,000 for associate'sdegrees. You could get that for less than $2,000 at you local community college.
Private universities are a response to current realities: many low-risk jobs require a paper degree, but no actual skills. Many traditional universities are needlessly stupid and expensive if all you want is that paper. And there is plenty of free money to go around, irrespective of merit.
100% true. But I don't have anything against private universities. In fact, I went to a private university. That said, it was a non-profit, regionally accredited private university -- the complete opposite of the nationally accredited for-profit universities that were mentioned in the articles that I linked to. Private does not equal for-profit, and that is an important distinction to make. This image sums it up nicely.
make it so you can do a chapter 11 or 9 to get rid of the loans and then the banks will force the schools to cost less and do better.
. . . DoD/CIA, dood!
Or leave it like it is and let future students learn from the current batch of idiots.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
It's unfair to call the current batch "idiots" when they've been lied to consistently by teachers, guidance counselors, and then professors that their college education will be both necessary and meaningful. And likely that's still true for some engineering fields (though the price is still a bubble), but for a "Grievance Studies" degree? It's one Hell of a sophisticated con job, and I have some sympathy for the marks who fall for it - how's a kid supposed to figure out that the educational system as a whole is not a source of truth?
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
They charge whatever people are willing to pay.
As others have pointed out, that's distorted by subsidies. And, of course, all bubbles are build on "what people are willing to pay", just with a dose of deception about the value provided!
Choosing worthless and overpriced degrees is the responsibility of students and parents, not of universities.
It's unfair to expect someone to have the education to recognize they're being conned when it's the education system itself who are the con-men. Really, how are kids supposed to figure this out beforehand?
The bubble will pop when students come to their senses. Until then, it remains worthwhile to charge inflated amounts for useless degrees.
Ah, you're the kind who gives "libertarianism" a bad name. Fraud is fraud, and victim-blaming isn't appropriate. Sure, people should, in general, be more sophisticated shoppers and be harder targets for fraud, but that in no way changes the morality of fraud. When the education system itself it lying to kids about the necessity and value of a given degree, that's pure Evil.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
To me there are two kinds of elite. The classic one that generally serves only the rich elites is a university that is very hard to get into.
But the second kind would be one where they teach hard things to high levels and thus it is hard to graduate from. With an online scenario it could be possible to let pretty much everyone in and let the actual courses be the filter.
That said, I have a nephew who recently graduated from a third rate university's engineering program. Basically they taught them shit but worked them to the bone. If you didn't have a fantastic work ethic and discipline then you may very well not complete the course. But the engineering skills learned would be borderline useless.
So what I would love with an online truly elite university would be basically opensource courses. That is all the materials, videos, tests, etc would be published. This way they would have trouble concealing the fact that their course sucked.
The whole non-profit thing is a scam anyway just like non-profit healthcare. It's just a ruse to avoid taxes. Everyone involved in a non-profit makes money. It's just the accounting.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
You are confused sir. There is no fraud when someone willingly chooses poorly yet still receives a quality education in a field that is irrelevant. That's called personal choice.
I believe you're out of touch. There are people who genuinely believe that a "Women's Studies" degree, or an Anthropology degree, etc, will help them get a job and prosper, because they've been sold a bill of goods.
I'd love to see clear product labeling for degrees. "People with this degree make about the same in five years as people with no degree make at the same age", or "people in this field make above the median income, but few graduates with this degree from this college are working in this field".
We could at least provide the level of information easily available to a car shopper, no? Then perhaps market corrections would happen before the absurd sort of bubble we have today!
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=salary+by...
You major in Women's Studies and you get a Women's Studies degree. You are told up-front how much it costs. There is tons of information on the kinds of careers you can take. Where is the fraud?
Oh, I agree: it's evil. And who is doing the lying? High school teachers, mostly in public schools, financed by tax dollars.
I sure hope so! A "bad name" with people like you is an endorsement.
"Sold" by who? My college didn't promise wealth from a Women's Study degree.
"We" do. It's been in books and newspapers for over half a century. It's online these days. http://bit.ly/180oEsq
It's questionable whether there even is a bubble. The vast majority of Americans graduate from college without large debts. You accumulate a large debt and have trouble repaying it if you (1) choose to go to an overpriced, elite school and (2) major in something useless. That's a small percentage of all majors, and they really only have themselves to blame.
My community college is more like 8k. 60 hours at 135 per credit hour.
I bet the VCs will own all the IP. Faculty will all be pundits and TED-talk allstars. And the graduates will be working for daddy.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1369118X.2013.808365
Wow, according to your chart, for-profit universities (DeVry) are more expensive than private/public universities. There is literally no reason to go to a for-profit university. I had always figured they were cheap, and that's why someone would go......but they aren't cheap, and they aren't good (I put them at a level below community college as far as job recruiting goes). That's really sad.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
I suspect that primary education will be heavily impacted by computer learning at home. it is a political issue which pits breeding families against those who desire to pay less taxes. It will also hit minorities and non traditional families far harder than upper middle class families and suppression of minorities seems to be an actual goal in the US. When it comes to colleges our system has degraded and college students are now a divided group with non academic types out numbering more legitimate academic personalities. Students with serious academic desires need to be cloistered as they make huge sacrifices as they face impossible academic demands. It is important to see what other academics are giving up in order to acquire knowledge. There is a bit of group suffering and bucking up ones fellows that is vital. Yet the bulk of current college students are treating education more like a trade school in which they simply need to get some certificates in order to find better employment upon graduation. Frankly these students do not belong in colleges at all. And we even have teachers and professors who are in this group. They simply act like some sort of tape recorder that soaks up what is told to them and passes it to the next cluster of students without ever doing any real study into their own fields. Thus they pick up factual errors and pass it from generation of students one to the next until the false fact becomes some sort of academic truth.
Non-profit... for-profit... lotsa profit, online, on campus... it's all just the tail wagging the dog if the education leaves you spending most of the rest of your working life paying for it, which is what it's become. Yes, the educational system is in for a big bubble-busting disruptive technology that will put the vast majority of those overpaid uni execs on unemployment. The name of the bubble buster is Khan Academy, and once it gets up to speed-- and it's getting there fast-- this country as well as many others will begin to see a level playing field in education and employment opportunities. Thank you, thank you, a thousand times over, Salmon Khan https://www.khanacademy.org/
There are people who genuinely believe that a "Women's Studies" degree, or an Anthropology degree, etc, will help them get a job and prosper
Having a degree in Women's Studies or Anthropology (or Ancient Greek or Medieval Music, or whatever) proves to employers that you are capable of getting a degree. The assumption that you are then limited to jobs in Women's Studies or Anthropology (or Ancient Greek or Medieval Music) is ridiculous.
An undergraduate university course is not the same thing as a vocational training course. Obviously, if you want to be a doctor or something, you're probably not going to do a four year course in Fine Art then start again to do a medical degree and the rest, but that is the exception.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Why shouldn't college be (mostly) vocational training, is the thing. That sounds like Universities wasting students time, if they don't actually learn any useful skills.
As I said upthread, it's fine if you also have universities for trust-fund babies who don't need any useful skills to inherit Daddy's business. That's a big chunk of Ivy League school students, after all.
But the rest of us will be working, and school should leave us prepared to work, ideally in a field that pays well (as pay is the signal not just of the value of the work to the community, but of the need for more people do do that work vs too many already). And most students, parents, and employers want just that: graduates who are much better prepared to contribute on being hired than non-graduates.
Let's be honest, an engineering degree may mean something about your work ethic and smarts, even in a different field, but a *Studies degree proves jack shit about your ability to get the job done - any job.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
http://fredoneverything.net/Po...