Posted on 08/29/2014 10:33:00 AM PDT by Kaslin
Thousands of moms and dads, following the script written into an autumn ritual of the middle class, are preparing to say farewell to the sons and daughters they've loved, nurtured and tried to civilize for two decades. They're sending the next generation off to college and saying goodbye to a considerable chunk of the family savings.
We've been told so many times that college is an investment to ensure a prosperous future, that nearly everybody believes it. But it's an investment with risks. The cost of a college degree runs as high as $60,000 a year at the elite schools -- nearly a quarter of a million dollars by the end of the fourth year. The average college graduate carries a debt of $33,000, many with more than that and a few twice that. A growing number of critics say the university system is an anachronism in the Age of the Internet. There must be a better way. One of them might be digital.
Some of the most innovative ideas are known by the acronym MOOC, for Massive Open Online Courses, which invite participation and electronic exchange and conversation with professors armed with videos and access to online information. Many online schools are accredited; some are free, and several are run by professors from elite universities.
The newest model in the high-tech smorgasbord is called the Minerva Project, named for the Roman goddess of wisdom. Minerva is a new university global in approach, eliminating the costliest aspects of traditional college education, but it's not a MOOC because it will offer a city campus with small classes. Minerva cuts costs by having no tenure, no ivy clinging to huge old buildings, no football stadium or basketball field house, no dining hall, no library, no expensive and wasteful administrative bureaucracy, and perhaps most unusual -- and controversial -- no lectures.
Minerva revels in being elitist and aims to make a profit by teaching the best and the brightest through digital exchange, motivating students to learn without frills. The university takes no federal money and will rely on private funding. (It's already raised $25 million from investors.)
Ben Nelson, 38, is the ambitious founder of Minerva and the successful entrepreneur who created Snapfish, the online snapshot processor, which he sold to Hewlett Packard for $300 million in 2005. He says Minerva is designed to educate leaders who will run major institutions in the world. His first major faculty hire was Stephen M. Kosslyn, who taught and held administrative posts at Harvard and Stanford, identified by Atlantic magazine as the man who will train professors to teach the Minerva way.
"We don't necessarily know how to teach you to be a better orthodontist or a better tax accountant," Mr. Nelson tells the daily London Independent. "We innovate in teaching you how to think, how to be creative, how to communicate effectively -- and how to lead." Too much time and money in the old system is spent on disseminating knowledge which is already freely available on the Internet. It can be elicited in dialogue with smart teachers and savvy kids.
The teaching at Minerva will be done in intensive, interactive seminars, many conducted online using Minerva's specialized video-conferencing system, with professors based in different cities. It's not free, but it's not as expensive as the Ivy League education to which Minerva expects to be eventually compared.
Minerva's first freshman class is made up of only 33 carefully selected students, and the founder expects up to 300 by next year, with tuition, room and board priced at $28,000. To attract talented, motivated students for its inaugural year in San Francisco, first-year freshmen get a $10,000 tuition scholarship for four years and free room and board in their first year. Minerva expects to eventually open campuses in London, Berlin, New York City, Buenos Aires, Mumbai (it used to be called Bombay) and Hong Kong.
Initial start-up costs are relatively inexpensive, and Minerva says it could show a profit of up to $280 million annually if it grows to classes the size of 2,500 students. Minerva has attracted big-name advisers, including Larry Summers, the former secretary of the Treasury and once the president of Harvard, and Bob Kerrey, the former Democratic senator from Nebraska and once the president of the New School in New York.
Curriculum at Minerva is crucial, and cornerstone courses teach ways of thinking with studying of the fundamentals. The great books will be taught with prominent scholars as guides in online seminars. Science labs will emphasize controlled experiments, and the humanities will emphasize classical rhetoric and persuasion.
This could sound like a big pie in the sky, but many parents, like those waving goodbye to their offspring this week, are desperate for something better than expensive and politically correct mediocrity. If it's the pie that satisfies, they want a piece of it.
“We don’t necessarily know how to teach you to be a better orthodontist or a better tax accountant,” Mr. Nelson tells the daily London Independent. “We innovate in teaching you how to think, how to be creative, how to communicate effectively — and how to lead.”
Teach them a trade. We’ve already got enough opinionated political science majors dumped on us.
I don't think there will EVER be a "Mumbai Bicycle Club".
Learning a trade is wonderful and more should probably go that route, but I believe there remains a place for a liberal arts education. So I say teach them not what to think, but how to think.
I don't think there's gonna be a "Myanmar Shave", either.
“Tax accountant” shouldn’t even be a profession, because tax law should be simple enough for anyone to understand and comply. Orthodontists, on the other hand, do something socially useful. So do HVAC technicians.
i disagree... i am not sending my kids to college to learn a trade... they can do that outside of college... in fact, instead of sending students to college to learn a trade, they ought to have more "trade schools" or apprenticeships... college should be for the deep thinkers, learners... like it was when Thomas Jefferson studied... and it should not be so easy for anybody and everybody to get in... from the beginning of our boys' academic lives, we have aimed to teach them how to think--not what to think... i want their college years to continue in that vain where they take what they think and begin to demonstrate it, communicate it through speaking and writing... continue to discover it in their science and logic studies...
some of the Founding Fathers were classically educated, and were also very hands-on, physical men who could farm and ranch... hunt and build... that is what i want for my boys... i want them to be men who can do constructive things with their hands (a trade), and who can not only read a law and understand it, but have the skill to write one... we want them to be what is considered the whole man... cultivating their hands, minds and spirits...
our hope is they are free thinkers and lifelong learners...
“We’ve already got enough opinionated political science majors dumped on us.”
Maybe, but most of them were never taught to think critically. If they can teach that, it’s more valuable than any professional training.
Today's education, for the most part, either ignores the soul or works to deprave it.
Studying liberal arts and learning a trade are BOTH worthy endeavors. What is a waste of time and money is the hybrid: majoring in, say, “Criminal Justice”.
To deny liberals arts is to deny Western Civilization, which has been the goal of academia since the 1950s.
There are a ton of small Christian colleges that make Hillsdale look huge. Christendom College has something like 400 students.
Well how about this ....... we don’t send everyone with a pulse that barely finished high school to a four year college on federal grants and loans.
I believe maybe 25% - 40% of those going to a four year college should be going.
We’ve got way too many 25 - 26 year olds that have never really worked a day in their lives. They’re 25- 26 and have no experience. That’s one of the reasons we had so many illegals come over here. They were willing to work.
Again, college isn’t for everyone.
bump for later reading
This could get interesting, if allowed. Dismantle the teacher tenure system would be a good start.
Or, a “Mumbai Gin?”
Liberal arts is the only education, all the rest is job training. Unfortunately we are turning out college graduates with a major in history who can’t name the right decade for the start of the American civil war, have never heard of the Magna Charta or the battle of Hastings and have a hard time naming the country we revolted against to create the USA. They think “seven hundred percent less” makes as much sense as “seven hundred percent more” and they don’t know to from two or too. They can use there, their and they’re all in one long sentence and use each one incorrectly. Often they can listen to a political speech filled with nothing but pure nonsense and call it great oratory. There is very little educating going on but there are huge numbers of degrees being handed out. Some of those degrees cost a lot more than my father earned in his entire working lifetime and produce a graduate with less real education than he had as an eighth grade dropout. If we have as I fear a real SHTF situation about to erupt most of them will be about as useful as a screen door on a submarine. I am trying to make friends with some old rednecks who still know how to do something worthwhile like catching a catfish.
so true
and the only jobs they seem to find are schools, government, politics and the media.
Thus, the results of the 2008 & 2012 Presidential election.
They can use there, their and they’re all in one long sentence and use each one incorrectly.
I've considered becoming an adjunct at the local community college but I haven't pondered all the way through what I'd do if confronted by multiple papers to grade with such egregious grammar and usage. My blood pressure should probably be my first consideration.
yes--James Madison, James Monroe and Thomas Jefferson were among those classically educated... they read the Greeks and Romans... studied Latin and Greek... logic and rhetoric... geometry, mathematics... all the things we are striving give our boy--along with a biblical upbringing as their foundation--before they go to college...
because of their classical education, our Founding Fathers were able to conceive of our United States of America...
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