The future of university education?

In 2012, Ben Nelson, businessman and CEO of the Minerva Project (www.minerva.kgi.edu), set out to create the best university in the world.

"Unless you demonstrate that you are the absolute best, that you can provide an education that Harvard, Cambridge and Oxford cannot come close to, no one will listen," he recently told The Guardian newspaper.

By partnering with the Keck Graduate Institute to create Minerva Schools at KGI (a non-profit university program headquartered in San Francisco), Nelson aimed to revolutionize higher education.

He might just be approaching his goal, and his model seems more popular than ever.

Minerva received 25,000 applications from 180 countries for undergraduate entry this year and admitted just 2 percent of them - making it, in terms of numbers, the most selective degree program in the developed world. However, the school still claims to offer admission to "all students who qualify."

When it was established, Minerva's approach was original, although in a post-Covid world, many are becoming increasingly familiar with such systems.

There are no lectures, faculty buildings, or exams. All teaching is done through online video classes. There is only one study program for first years and instead of the usual maths or history, courses teach transferrable skills such as critical thinking and problem-solving.

Subject specializations are chosen in the second year. There is no campus, although there are halls of residence for first years in San Francisco.

As their education progresses, students spend subsequent semesters in Seoul, Hyderabad, Berlin, Buenos Aires, London and Taipei.

Minerva's first class graduated in 2019, and of 103 students, 94 percent were in full-time positions or graduate programs within six months. A total of 16 percent have landed roles in the technology sector, and graduates have gone on to work at companies such as Google, Twitter, Uber and Razor Labs.

What's so special about this?

Minerva makes a number of claims that might be questioned. At US$13,950 (HK$108,810) a year for an undergraduate course, Minerva references its "low tuition fees." However, most local students outside the US (in Hong Kong, the UK, across Europe, in Canada and Australia), would pay similar fees to attend campus.

Minerva also guarantees small seminar groups of under 20. Again, there is nothing distinctive here. Its teaching model - where professors speak for only a few minutes and all students are expected to participate - would be familiar to anyone attending a decent seminar at a reasonable university.

What Minerva does have, though, is a head start - as more universities face the uncertainties of the 2020/21 academic year by shifting more content online.

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