An Ivy education without the debt? Minerva Project non-profit to figure out how | Hacker News Reader

An Ivy education without the debt? Minerva Project non-profit to figure out how

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16 pointsiProject9 comments

The concept is absurd. Harvard isn't valuable because you learn from special Harvard-only textbooks. It's valuable because you're immersed among peers that have all passed the selection process, you work with Harvard's incredible faculty, and most importantly because at the end of the day your degree says "Harvard" on it. You can't reproduce any of these things in an online format that isn't backed by Harvard itself.

I think online education is barking up the wrong tree. There is no value in online Harvard's and online Stanford's. The real value is going to come from online DeVry's. Programs to help people get skills and certifications without paying a lot for college.

If you're an American who actually has to worry about costs the Ivy League is almost always going to be one of your cheapest options. I find it incredibly irritating that the typical debate over college cost lays the tuition price out there and claims that's the cost for a normal person.

I'm not from a poor family, but I payed less than a thousand a year for Columbia. You'd have to make a quarter million dollars a year and have no other siblings in college (I think they even take into account medical expenses) to not qualify for something. I'd imagine most of the other schools that do needs-blind are about the same: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Need-blind_admission#U.S._insti...

There are only a limited number of Ivy League slots available, though. And they aren't really making any more, so it's only going to get harder and harder to get in.

The Ivy League works pretty well but it doesn't scale.

EDIT: "needs-blind admission" doesn't mean that it's cheap. It just means they'll admit you without regards to your ability to pay. They might still require you to take a boatload of student debt in order to get through.

Ivy League is not supposed to scale, it is supposed to be scarce. Its purpose is credentialing for differential social status. If an Ivy League education were widely accessible and no longer scarce, it would lose its value as a credential. And then the companies that hire only Ivy League grads would need to choose another indicator of pedigree. (Actually they are already starting to do this, by asking applicants what prep school they went to, a more reliable indicator of social pedigree than what university they went to.)

I would consider this a highly desirable outcome, as it would help finalize the divorce between access to higher learning and social pedigree, putting the lie to the official fiction that we are living in a "meritocracy."

You'd have to make a quarter million dollars a year and have no other siblings in college (I think they even take into account medical expenses) to not qualify for something

That may be true, but if you come from a middle class family you would not qualify for a full scholarship. Instead you would likely get a grant, loans, and work-study. When I applied for college in 1998, private schools cost $25k per year, and schools offered me $10-15k in grants and the rest in work study and loans (I am from an upper middle class family and had a brother in college at the same time). I chose to go to UCLA because tuition was $4k per year and my parents could write a check so I graduated debt free. If Minerva is going to succeed, it needs to offer something comparable to and cheaper than a top tier state school instead of focusing on Ivy's.

I take your point completely, but a thousand a year sounds low. Was some of your cost covered by loans?

So I wasn't super clear - it was about a thousand a year tuition after grants, before the rest kicked in. I did wind up taking a few thousand a year in loans for rent and food since I couldn't work enough to cover NY living expenses. I didn't count that since I would have had to pay that anyway.

I'm surprised. The trend in education seems to be MOOCs. Charging tuition feels like a step backwards. There are plenty of bright people in the world who wouldn't be able to afford to pay $500 let alone half of a typical Ivy League tuition.

I suppose exclusivity in the form of curating and moderating could help ensure quality of the content. But is there any reason why the general public shouldn't have read access at the very least?

I'm curious to see what this turns into. Education is important, so I hope they find a way to put that $25 million to good use.

They kinda tried this a hundred years ago.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvard_Classics http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Harvard_Classics_(Bookshelf)

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