The problem with Minerva
My wife is big on education. The fact that I did not have a degree was likely one of the biggest items that gave her and her family pause prior to us getting married. Part of it's cultural and part of it tied to the fact that her father was a College Physics Professor in a land that didn't have many such positions. So my interest in investigating this grew out of that, my wife's desire that I, at some point, get a degree.
Personally, the draw for further education where the overriding aim is either a degree or prestige, has never really been a motivator.for myself. I attended two years at the University of Utah and, while I very much enjoyed the resources for learning that a University offers, there was little else to compel me to obtain a terminal degree.
To my point on Minerva, why would someone of note, interested in novel and everything about the world that's disrupting the old model, why would an exceptional and genuinely mold breaking person like that have a desire to create a new prestige centric institution? Why create IVY 2.0? Why try and create a degree on par with the elite when the whole purpose of modern learning and tech culture is that it's what you know and can do than what kind of rubber stamp you can obtain?
I read their application and wonder 'Who of those really seeking a new order are going to really swallow some modern iteration of the same worn out concept of an elite rubber stamp setting you above everyone else principally due to your being able to win at whatever rigmarole they have, in an a way that is a priori arbitrary, set up?
I'd much rather the validation of market forces and natural selection as a stamp of the value of my past doings than I would like any, even if well intentioned, modern rendition of the old mortarboard and folded document.