(2012-04-05) Minerva University

Audrey Watters profiles the newly-funded Minerva Project plan to create an "elite" university (College Education) from scratch using mostly online teaching. The College Admission-s process will be just like it is now for top schools. Courses will be taught online. The students, however, will live in "dorm clusters." They'll spend their first year in their home country, but then in their sophomore year will move around abroad to other countries' locations. When the university matriculates its first class in 2014, Nelson isn't sure how many of those locations will be ready, but he predicts one location in the U.S., one in Asia, and one in Europe... On its board of advisors is Larry Summers, former Harvard President and former Secretary of the Treasury; Patrick Harker, President of the University of Delaware and former Dean of the Wharton School of Business; Senator Bob Kerrey; and Lee Shulman, Emeritus Professor of the Stanford School of Education. Wow, $20k/yr is pretty expensive for that. But interesting. (Update: I'm pretty sure it's $10k for tuition and $10k for room/board, which is much different.)