Project Minerva

then I noticed that, you know, we needed one. I talked about maybe another future of education episode, and I had just read an article in The Atlantic which we will be referring to numerous times in this podcast called the Future of College question Mark, and it was the author Graham would It was Wood's experience trying out something

called the Minerva Project. And so we wanted to talk about what the Minerva Project is, how it contrasts with the standard university experience as well as other alternatives to universities as far as higher learning goes. So in order to do that, first thing, one of the premisees that the Minerva Project is based upon is that there's something

wrong with the university system, right. That's like, that's like, that's one of the that's one of the first reasons for its supposed to you know, one of the first supposed reasons for its existence. How could you say that you anti intellectual? Uh? Well, I mean, I'm just reporting what has been said. But but if I had to wager a guess, I would say that, And actually I don't have to because this is all laid out in

the article. It's largely about the problem of cost. When it comes to pursuing a degree from from a college university, they can be pretty expensive. And yes, cost has always been one barrier to access to higher education, but it's

gotten particularly bad in recent years, hasn't it. Yeah, so, Joe, you found this article in Bloomberg about the increase in costs in uh in college tuition, and according to that article, the tuition costs have increased by five hundred thirty eight percent since n The article itself was written in two thousand and thirteen, so those numbers are probably even a little different today. I guess that's for US higher education. Yes, yeah,

specifically the United States. In fact, a lot of what we're going to talk about today is going to focus on the United States. That's where we live, so that tends to be our frame of reference, and it's where the Manerva project is based as well. Yes, currently there will be other locations for the Minerva Project, assuming everything goes well and that it doesn't collapse in on itself.

So let's say you're a person who looks this whole situation, all the great things about college and university and the mess that it's in right now. Also, so you see it as a trade off. You see, well, obviously college and university in America is one of the most culturally and economically and intellectually important things I can do with

my life. But at the same time, you see that is so much money, and I might not be getting the value that I want out of this investment, and lots of other concerns to me, Maybe I can't necessarily get into the college I want to go to the most. Well, on top of that, there's just the cultural pressure of attending college in the first place. And there may be people who don't necessarily want to go to college, but there is an intense social pressure to go into college,

even if that's not what you would prefer. So it may be that there might be a different pathway after high school that would suit you better. Maybe you want to go into a trade rather than going to a college, but because of social pressures, you feel the need to

actually go into this other uh area. And that one increases demand because now you've got people who don't even necessarily really want to be there pursuing those those limited slots, and to it means that this person's life gets put on hold for however long they're in college, and and

in the meantime they may be you know, accruing debt. Sure, And it's an industry pressure as well, because, especially as more job application happens online and more algorithms are sorting through people's resumes, not having a college degree to check off can get you automatically filtered out of a lot

of potential jobs. Yeah, even if you might be best suited for that job, and someone who has a degree, maybe they might be fine at it, but maybe they didn't wouldn't have done the job as well as you would have had. Then that doesn't matter if that algorithm just you know, just because yeah, yeah, you're you go into the trash pile because you didn't have this one

box checked. Okay, Well, now that we've discussed the problem, I think we should look at this idea of the Minerva Project and see how that compares to what the other options are today. I mean, so we obviously have traditional college or traditional university, and then we also have other sort of strange alternative options like massive open online courses, which we've talked about on this podcast before. And then there's this new thing, the Minerva Project. How does it

stack up? What is it and does it really compare? Uh, it's an odd duck. It's it's a startup company and what it's meant to do is to take the place of an IVY League education. Now IVY League for those who are not in the United States, IVY League refers to a group of eight different colleges in the northeastern United States that are known for being incredibly selective, prestigious. They're they're considered to be uh, you know, a degree from one of these institutions is considered to be a

very high achievement. Uh. When I say very selective, I'm talking about sometimes they're they're uh accepting that the only accept six percent, like some of the one of the colleges in particular, six percent is how many out of all the people who apply they get they get Uh, accepted. Can you guess which one it is? Hey, you got it in one. Harvard has a six percent rate of accepting new students, meaning percent of people who apply do not get in. So there's there's obviously a demand for

this level of education. There's also a lack of supply for that education, which means that this education gets really expensive. So a fellow by the name of Ben Nelson came up with this idea for the Minerva Project and thought, what if we were to create a new institution that could give an Ivy League level education to students for far less money than what it would cost to attend one of these colleges. Uh. Not all of the issues

are solved. For example, the issue about a limited number of slots is very much not solved by the Minerva Project because they limit their entire class to thirty people, Which I mean, that's it thirty that's that's thirty slots for the entire project, Like graduating class. Yeah, you're graduating class is thirty people. So if we're talking about the pros and cons of the idea of the Minerva Project,

is the future of education? Really we're talking about it's sort of model, not its specific right, because because it is technically a single private college that is very very small, Yes, extremely exclusive as it turns out, UM. And also yeah, it's not scalable by its very nature. What the Minerva Project is cannot scale larger. Based upon the approach they're wanting to take with a teacher to student relationships, well, they are hoping to gale it up to hire enough

teachers to be able to provide for more students. But when you've got a when you've got a class limits size of nineteen, you cannot have more than nineteen people enrolled in a single class. You rapidly reach a point where, unless you have grown to gargantuan levels, you're not going to have enough faculty to support the number of students that would be needed to fill out you know, you know, a class of a hundred thousand or something that you

might see in an enormous university. UM. But at any rate, Minerva Project, the model is what we really need to focus on. Okay, but let's hear the story. What's the story of the Minerva Project. So Nelson, he comes up with this idea. He, by the way, had come from an interesting background. He had been the president of a uh, a company called Snapfish. Have you heard of it? Online photo sharing? Yeah? So he was president of that, uh. And then that company got bought by another little company

called HP good Packard. Yeah so uh. He fresh with cash, had thought about this for a while, about the idea of creating a private, for profit company that essentially sells an ivy League level education, meaning that you would actually, you know, you would as a student have to do the work. It's not like they're selling a degree. It's not a it's not some sort of diploma factory. It's not like that, but that it would take the place

of what he thought of as an antiquated system. And we have more to say about that a little bit later too. So uh. At any rate, the he had a round of venture funding held back in two thousand twelve, raised about twenty five million dollars to really develop this idea and partnered with the Keck Graduate Institute kg I to actually develop the curriculum and structure this institution, which is very small right now, I mean with thirty incoming

class members. Keep in mind this is for two fourteen, So for the year of two thousand fourteen, there will only be thirty people kind of running through it. Think of it like a pilot program. Uh, they're given a free ride for this particular project, a four year, four year free scholarship for the thirty people that would in exchange for kind of being a psych experiment. Yeah yeah, I mean, you know, the considering that I think only two of their actual degrees are accredited right now. Uh,

it might be a bit of a gamble. I mean, unless you're majoring in one of those two, in which case you're like suck as um because you're like, I've already got my degree accredited, I just have to earn it now. Uh. But at any rate, it's it's definitely going to be an interesting experiment. Now, normally it would cost ten thousand dollars a year to attend this particular school, which is much much lower than one of the Ivy

League college certainly at that that that rivals. And I went to college ten years ago, my my public school education. So yeah, see when I went to college, it cost you a song and a sandwich. That's how long ago it was. Now it was significantly expensive at any rate. Uh, Like if you wanted to go seriously, how much did you pay in shekels? Actually it was these giant stone coins that took forty men to roll down, and that's why Athens streets are in such bad repair these days.

People paying for their No, no, that was the year before me. At any rate, UM, so ten thousand dollars a year is significantly less expensive than say, if you were going to Harvard. Harvard, by the way, UH in two thousand fourteen, a year at Harvard costs just tuition alone cost forty three thousand dollars ninety three thousand nine or thirty eight dollars. Then you have to tack on another fourteen thousand, six d sixty nine dollars for room and board, which ends up for one year being fifty

eight thousand, six hundred seven dollars. That's one year at Harvard. So a ten thousand dollar versus fifty eight thousand dollars, you can easily see the difference. But um then you know, getting back to the story of the Minerva project. UH. Once he had made this decision and the and partnered with k g I and they got this this funding, they started looking around to find the people who would be in charge of developing the actual courses that students

would take and right now. It's it's pretty much an elite group of of uh, you know, talk about celebrity faculty. You've got some celebrities on this one. So the dean of the faculty is Stephen Kostlin, who is the the former dean or a a former dean at Harvard University.

Um specialty is in cognitive psychology and neuroscience. Then you have other people like Diane F. Halpern, who's Dean of Social Studies and as a former president of the American Psychological Association a p A YEP, Eric Bonnabo, who is Dean of Computational Sciences and founder of Ico System Corporation, which does really complicated problem solving stuff using math to a point that's uncomfortable for me. And then you have James D. Sterling, who's Dean of Natural Sciences and a

founding member of the Keck Graduate Institute. Then you've got Daniel Levitton, who is Dean of Arts and Humanities and the director of the Laboratory for Music, Perception, Cognition and Expertise at McGill University. And they do, like you said, Lauren, they plan on hiring more faculty in the next couple of years. To bless out that group. But this is already a pretty you know, rock star kind of ensemble that they've got together. I'm imagine that's where a lot

of that twenty million dollars is going to right now. Um, although probably not a huge amount of that because there are other costs that you have to associate with this. Unlike a massive open online course, there is actually a physical location associated with this particular college, right right, there's a couple of physical locations I believe, or they're working towards that. There is a dorm which the students live in, which is however, right, However, there's not a campus. No,

there's no library, there's no gem, there's no dining hall. Well, I'm sure that's one way to save money. Yeah, yeah, that that would be a reason, one of the reasons why you would have a much lower buy in to get into the Minerva project. Yeah. So I'm interested by this because on one hand, it's not like they're going

for a super cheap option. I mean, there are colleges you can go to I'm sure that are cheaper than this, certainly, but they're trying to get a higher ratio of extremely high instructor profile and quality to uh to a tuition that is very low for what you're getting. Yeah, it's kind of it's a perception of increased value, you know, the idea that you are spending far less than you would at a place like Harvard, but getting an education that, at least they argue, is comparable to what you would

get if you were to go to someplace like Harvard. Now, whether or not the rest of the world views it that way is another question, right, I mean this we haven't even gotten into what their their plan is for their their teaching style, but it's there's a huge question mark here, which is that even after this experiment has run its course of the first the first class goes all the way through and graduates, will those degrees actually

be valued by outside sources? You know, if you're if you're a hiring manager at a company and you have someone who has on their resume a degree from Harvard and as someone who and someone who has a degree from the Nerva Project, are you really going to consider those two things to be weighed equally? And that's a question that we can't answer yet because it hasn't happened. Of course, the more intangible aspect is what sort of personal value does it provide to the student? How does

it figure into your own feelings of intellectual development? But that's a that's a harder thing to quantify, and I guess the public sphere absolutely to go back to the actual value of that degree. Like we mentioned earlier, accreditation is a key point in that and tech stuff. Did I believe an episode on the accreditation process we talked a little bit about it because we've we've covered online education before and accreditation is one of those things that

is it's it's an interesting concept. In the United States, the way it's done is that we have private uh accreditation organizations, all right, they are not part of the government. They're privately operated. They are regional though they can't Yes, they are regional, depending upon which one it is that may have a regional scope or even a national scope. The United States government does maintain a list of these different organizations that it considers to be yeah, or at

least accredited. Yeah. The accreditation services that are considered to be quality right there, they're considered to be capable of of scrutinizing an institution's offering and saying whether or not it actually has value. That's fascinating. It sounds kind of like credit reporting agencies. It kind of is. I mean,

it's quality assurance, is what it comes down to. It's like a private uh entity that's providing this major public service, right right, and well, I don't know if you call it service, but it's turns out to be that thing because you know, this is where some of those small online private colleges have wound up scamming students because they'll enroll a student for you know, a relatively small amount of tuition, but by the time the kid gets the degree,

they realize that no one accepts that degree. Yeah, and that's that's one of the reasons why the Minerva Project is actually I mean, they are going through this process because while the people at the Minerva Project have a lot of critical things to say with the way universities are run in general and the way that class is our run in particular, they do at least acknowledge that there is value to this accreditation, or at least that the rest of the world places value in it. So

you have to play the game, right. If you don't play the game, then it doesn't really matter how well you you do the Uh, the course work. It doesn't matter how well you design it or how well you implement it, because if no one else values it, then you your customers. Your students are right where they were before they enrolled, and that actually there. Depending upon whether or not they had to pay, they may be poorer

for it out. Yeah, now, the like I said that first group, since they get a free ride, we'll be able to really Uh, you know, the biggest risk they have is that they're they're wasting their time. They're dedicating time to it, and you know, there's no I don't think there's any argument that the students are you know, about whether or not the students are gonna learn while they're there. I think that they certainly will learn while they are there, especially considering that they've got some of

the leading thinkers in various fields as their teachers. Uh, they will, I think very much benefit from that experience. So the question is whether or not they can leverage the degree, which is kind of crazy when you get down to it, Like we're getting to a point now where we're thinking, yeah, it doesn't matter if you learn anything or not. Why do you do you have a piece of paper? Well, maybe we need to re examine this,

which I think is part of the point. But uh, it's it's certainly one of those circular problems like how do you how do you qualify what someone's education is without that piece of paper, that's the problem. So you've got Minerva getting accreditation and it's various programs. Like I said, I think two of them right now have been accredited and the other ones are still in the process. Um, and they have a presence in San Francisco. That's where

their first non campus location is. That's they have a headquarter office there and a dorm. Yeah, so the students actually do live in San Francisco, and part of the Minerva project plan is not just to have classes, but also to do things like field trips to take students

to different areas around where the housing is. And uh, they plan on having locations and other cities like Buenos Aires and Berlin are two of the ones that they plan on opening within the next couple of years, and then further ones in New York, London, I think Mumbai is one of them, and then having the students visit for certain periods of time, perhaps a semester, perhaps a year, different cities where these dorms exist so that they can get that international education that a lot a lot of

universities really do promise the opportunity for but don't always follow through with for all students. Yeah, I mean it's it's hard to do. I mean, you've got a university that has a physical location, and maybe you get a chance to study abroad with a partnership program or something, but it's not like you have enough money to apply for a study abroad program or if you're lucky enough to get a grant for it. Right, Okay, So I want to drill down and focus on the difference this

would make in the actual classroom experience. Imagine I'm somebody who enrolls in the Minerva Project and I go into the class on a regular class day. What is that like and how does it compare to a class in traditional higher education? All Right, So here's where we get

into some compare and contrast with mooks. Because if you're enrolled in a mook, then use a computer to log into an online course and you can do that from wherever in the world you happen to be, right, Well, in this case, they have an online platform, but you have to be at their San Francisco location. But there's no necessary there's not necessarily a physical classroom you're going into. You log in because the professors can be wherever they live.

The professors get the freedom of logging in from wherever they happen to have their home base. They are probably not in San Francisco. Probably not. And so what you do is you log into the classroom along with your fellow classmates, up to nineteen of you. There are no more than that are allowed in a single class, and everything is using webcams. Uh, there's a they have a proprietary online platform that allows for the class to take place. It gives the professor lots of like little bells and

whistles to control the classroom experience. And you had to buy a MacBook in order to be a student, was one of the sus. Yeah, yeah you can't. Yeah you can't. You don't get one to supply to you. You do have to bring your own. And the way it works is that you would log in, you log in through the software, and you you're in the classroom. Class begins and uh. The description in Wood's article was pretty interesting. It's very different from a typical college experience. For like

a a freshman level class at least. All right, so imagine that you log in and you're having a discussion about, um, some let's say Shakespeare. Let's just say Shakespeare, because that was my my focus when I was in college. Shakespeare with you? You know, where's your love for Ben Johnson? Oh? I have? Would you prefer Milton? All right, let's talk

about Milton. It's let's say that you're focusing on Milton, and so you're you're having a big discussion about Paradise Lost, and the very beginning of the class starts with a pop quiz. You you've already read the material. You know, there's no time wasted in class about that you've read it. You're expected to already have uh familiarity based upon whatever the parameters were. So they ask who's the coolest demon? And you know, obviously it's mammon. At any rate, Uh,

the pop quiz happens. The teacher can then start a discussion based upon people's answers, because you are immediately requested to give an answer within you know, it pops up on your screen and you have to answer it within

a certain amount of time. UM, and those answers propagated in real time on the professor's screen, and the professor can then say, all right, well we have And if it's a question that's a matter of opinion, the professor might divide up the class based upon the opinions presented and say, all right, well this team all represents this

one opinion. This other team represents this other opinion. We're going to have a discussion where you have to be able to assert your point and defend criticisms of your point, and then it may begin to become an interactive discussion. Because the class size is so small, you don't fade into the background, right, So it's not like a class in a big lecture hall where you might be sitting forty rows back in a big theater and you just you're your one, your one dot in a sea of

dots to the professor. No, and in this case, you're both your professor and your fellow classmates are looking at a screen of everyone else who's participating in the class. Yeah, if you're texting, Yeah, it gets it gets really according to to would really intense and fast paced and I quote here vaguely fascistic. Yes, so it's um, you know, and the argument that the Minerva Project folks make is that this this type of teaching forces student is to engage.

It forces them to actually work on comprehending the matter subject matter, not just absorbing or being able to recite my route, what is going on. They're supposedly going to have a greater understanding and appreciation for the course material and actually learn how to think, which ultimately is what education is about, all right, and also learn how to

engage with their fellow students. Um For for example, if someone was breaking out that class into into two different groups, the teacher might ask them to have kind of a little pow wow off to the side, and and the software can handle that. It can it can handle a certain group of kids going off and having a discussion on the side and then circling back for a larger discussion, right,

which is pretty useful, right. I mean, if we've we've all been in classrooms where they've divided people up into groups in order to have and you all kind of shuffle around and move your desks and dirty. It usually takes like ten minutes just to get the room rees

settled and then you have the discussion. It's very time consuming and the idea for the software is to facilitate that kind of stuff so that it's all automated, where you know, you can create these little virtual groups that only the people within the virtual group can see and hear each other for the duration of however long you're you're allowing the discussion to go on and then reforming

into an overall group and then having a full discussion. Uh. The idea is that this way you can have the benefit of all of that without the time consuming constraints that you would have in a real space and the price of the physical presence. Yeah yeah, yeah, So again we're getting to the cost to the student as well as whether or not what's the most efficient way to

get this information across now. Uh. One interesting thing about this is that the approach they've had, they seem supremely confident that it is the superior method to teach and uh, which may or may not be true, right. I guess

I'd have to experience it though. I Mean, it's hard to judge just based on a description, but I do most definitely think that intensely interactive education is the most valuable form of education, like because it's often a neglected aspect of education that when we're learning, people are kind of like, I need to be learning stuff. I need to be learning content, like I'm memorizing factual information about the subject matter that we're talking about. But that's only

a small part of what education is. I think one of the most significant parts of education is learning how to be part of a particular type of discourse. You know, all different field scientific and in the humanities, whatever they are sort of have their own language, they have their own mode of discourse. And if you're going to become educated in those fields, one of the most important things is to learn how to talk this kind of talk well, yeah, and and be a passive observer in a lecture hall.

Requires a lot of self discipline if you want to get a lot out of it, right, because it's very easy for you to check out, Well, it depends on the type of learner that you are. Yeah, yeah, that's also true. And that's that's another good point, Lauren, is the idea that Minerva projects so gung ho on this particular approach, which for some people may be absolutely the

best way to learn, but for others perhaps not. It might be too intimidating, It might be it might be too off putting, in which case you end up realizing you've made a ten mistake. Yeah. I personally, when I was reading the description of how this goes, it sounds like my own circle of hell, Like I would not I would not do this, and is it the circle ruled by Mammon? I should have picked a different Okay? Also great? Okay, you know what, despite your demonic predisposition, Joe,

I'm going to continue on with this podcast. Um No, the the I agree entirely that that this could very well be an experience that is uh, fundamentally unsound for some types of people who have different styles of learning.

And in fact, one of the things I think is really interesting is the concept of adaptive learning, which is where you've built in a kind of computer software that can detect the best ways to teach any particular student based upon his or her answers to tests and their ability to progress through course material, and that the software itself will end up in being able to infer what's the best approach, take the course material that exists, and then attempt to adapt it so that it matches the

students learning style the best. That is one other approach that we may see education take in the future, particularly in uh, you know, like elementary and high school level. But there's no reason why I wouldn't continue on to the higher education levels too. So certainly, and that's also not to say that something like Minerva Project couldn't incorporate

that kind of software eventually into what they're doing. Yeah, it would just be it would be a very different approach than that sort of extremely intense like interactive model that they've they've set up. And keep in mind, this was one test course that would took. It doesn't necessarily mean that every single course is exactly like that one, right, And his course was was specifically about a deductive reasoning.

That was the the test course he took. UM. Meanwhile, to go back to the massive open online courses, uh, they are very very different from Minerva Project. Right. They are, uh, first of all massive, so instead of having a class capt at thirty, you may have as many as a hundred thousand or more fellow students enrolled in any particular class.

So it's not only that you shouldn't get this idea of the Minerva Project mixed up with moos, but they're almost the opposite kind of thing that are opposite ends of the scale, with traditional education being somewhere more in the middle. Right, And we did do a whole episode about them back in June of which is a whole year ago, y'all. So so yeah, so yeah, let's continue refreshing. Right a year, how much has changed? Wait? No, nothing's

changed now. Um. One of the things that is the big difference, I mean, mouke, really when you look at Muka Minerva Project, the one thing that really remains central to both is the idea that the computer is your method of accessing the classwork. Otherwise they are very different. So Minerva Project you go to one whichever location your class has been assigned to for that given time. For a Mook, you log in from wherever you happen to be. Uh. Minerva Project, the class has kept at a very small

number ninety people. The move. There's no nest, there might not be any capital. Uh. Minerva Project is a is an attempt to create, like I said that Ivy League education in a new format. Whereas a mook may not have any kind of college credit associated with it whatsoever. Right, it might just be for sort of personal edification. Yeah, there are plenty of mook courses that are actually part of a paid education course like you could you could end up essentially auditing a class that is given to

actual paying students at some college. But the difference is the college students are going to get credit for passing that course. You are just going to have the experience of being able to see the class and maybe even participate in the work that's being done, unless in some cases the college allows you to pay an extra fee in order to receive Yeah, there are some experimental prototype classes that are doing that, where you either pay to enroll in the mooke or more more commonly, you go

through the whole experience. Uh. You take whatever the equivalent exams are, you get those graded, and then you pay to have that translated into college credit, which you might

then be able to transfer. If you wanted to go to, say a brick and mortar school, you could transfer the credits you had already accrued through this process and have a leg up rather than going in as a freshman with no credit whatsoever, which in the end could be a way for you to save money, because in general this process is far less expensive than taking that course by enrolling in the school. Right, even if you're having to pay to get that credit validated at the end.

Usually that amount is much less money than it would be if you had to attend as a student. So there's that, and you know it's again they tend to not be as interactive, although they often will have an interactive forum set up as part of the class experience, and depending on the class and the people involved in it, those can be very enriching. But you but it's entirely

self based. You have to be motivated to take to take advantage of those opportunities, right, And you know, you realize that when you're talking about a class where there may be as many as a hundred thousand or more people enrolled in it, you are not going to get personal attention. It's not a possibility. Right. You're talking about the population of a sizeable town taking a course. One teacher and a couple of incredibly stressed out teaching aids are not going to be able to handle that kind

of load. So it's a very different experience. Wouldn't that be a cool town to live in? This is microbiology one O one town. I'm pretty sure they did that show. It was called Eureka. I never saw it. No, you're not talking about Eureka's Castle now, I'm talking. I'm talking about the show Eureka with Colin Ferguson. It was cute and it's it's it's a cute show, or it was a cute show. So is Eureka's Castle. That's true, It's true.

Both valid points. Joe, thank you. Um, but yeah, this was so so moving on now we've talked about, you know, what moos are and how they are different from what the Minerva Project is trying to be. What do you guys think about the Minerva Project? Do you think that this is, in fact, as the title of the article suggests, the future of college question mark I. I'm really curious to see where it goes. I am kind of holding

off an official opinion for right now. I am slightly dubious based on just this this article in The Atlantic and what I've read about it myself, because I don't know it's I'm really glad that that Woods article brought the Minerva Project to light, and and I'm so fascinated by everything that these are saying, because they're clearly very passionate about the state of education right now and where

it's going in the future, and that's awesome. Like more people being excited about this and trying new things is rad um, if you know, you'll excuse my colloquial parlance of our times. But he says things like, we have no evidence that lectures are a good way to teach. I'm pretty sure that people do research into ways to teach and whether or not they're good and who they

work for continually. Um, So I don't think that's really accurate. Uh. He also says that the biggest innovation in universities in the past thirty years was to double its costs and hire more administrators at higher salaries. I feel like technology has done a couple of things in the past thirty years in universities, So you know, there's just I kind of wish that he had taken a deeper consideration of

the field that the scientific field of evaluating education. I think a lot of it probably also comes from his conversations with the people behind the Minervo project, who have a vested interest obviously in promoting that. And of course, uh Nelson the founder has not been shy about stirring controversy and sturing that pot and saying, you know, hey, we're gonna we're gonna be right there, side by side with you, and then later saying we're going to reform

all of the university level of education. We're gonna change the world, and his his job is to be incendiary. That's wonderful. It's it's it's important for the project to move forward. It's important for them to get the funding they need in rage for this this experiment to happen. I'm not criticizing it at all, but I do think that that's probably a large part of why Wood's article

reflects that, because that's the message that's being given. And and I'm not even suggesting that they're insincere at all. I feel like they sincerely believe that this is the superior method to uh in party education, to people like to teach people and to have them actually learn and have that be effective. Whether or not it's true is a totally different matter. Right, it may be, but it may not be. So. Yeah, I can see where you're coming from there. Uh. Personally, I would love to see

this project succeed. However, I don't think it's like especially using the teaching model that was was illustrated in the article, It's really hard for it to be a scalable thing because again, you your faculty would have to balloon to massive numbers in order to have a huge class. So, uh, either you have to have two hundred competing startup companies that are all doing the same thing that the Minerva projects doing, all with different prices. Essentially becomes a new

university landscape. Yeah. So it's one of those things where I think it could easily become part of the future of education. I don't think it's going to supplant it well, I mean, I think it certainly isn't going to become the widespread future of education, especially because what they're trying to do is provide an IVY League level of education, which I mean that's just not even well suited to everyone.

That's not even what everyone wants. And even if even if it were, you would be limited by the number of resources you could get who would actually be able to provide an IVY League level depending upon depending upon

how you're defining IVY League level. I mean, obviously there's other colleges that are not in the IVY League that have some phenomenal leading thinkers in various fields, but that's specifically the the focus of the Minerva project is you know, they took the Ivy League as the the pinnacle, the example that they wanted to live up to, which is

understandable in the United States. Um. Well, yeah, I would say in favor, I would just echo again the comments already made that that I do think having lots of direct conversation and interaction between experts in the field and students is one of the fastest ways to get students acclimatized to the discourse of a technical or you know, or of whatever field. Yeah, and whatever, the community, whatever it is. Uh, And that's something that you can see

students struggling with. I mean, I've actually taught at the college level, and there's there's a disconnect they're that goes on for many years with a lot of students while they're they're trying to get used to the way people talk when they're when they're working in a certain type of discourse. H I experienced it just in literature. I'm sure it's even more difficult when you're talking about one

of the sciences. Well, jargon everywhere, But yeah, I think the future of education, the future of higher learning in particular, is heavily dependent upon again how we view that socially and culturally, and whether or not we continue to consider college education as being uh, you know, like if you are capable of pursuing it, then you should pursue it. As long as that message is the the kind of unofficial message that's given to everybody, we're going to continue

having this supply demand problem. And uh, Meanwhile, if that is also happening in in sync with a economic depression where jobs are getting harder and harder to find, people are holding onto them longer, they're retiring later, and you have this this issue with jobs, then that that raises like all sorts of questions about the value of education, whether or not it makes sense to go into it

in the first place. So I think really a lot of the factors that are going to determine the future of education have nothing to do with teaching at all and has everything to do with culture, uh and with economy, and that is really going to be the big impact. And these other argue it's at the moment are hard in the pun academic, I can't believe I said all that just to set up the pun. Is that really why you said all of that? You gotta wind him up before you knock them down. No, I really do

believe that though. I really do think that that that cultural, cultural pressures, and economic realities are going to be what really shapes the future of the college the university UM, at least in the near term. Long term, who knows.

Long term, we may see things like the Minerva Project become more common and perhaps be a real competitor to the traditional university experience, right, I mean, I guess the big question is not whether they will whether this kind of model will completely take over education in America as

we've discussed. It's more like, will this remain a steady and reliable, small subset of higher education or will be maybe a hundred people in the world who can say I got a degree from the Nerva project before it went under. We don't know. We'll have to wait and see. So I'm very curious to see how this plays out. And uh, I wish them all the best because I think that they're intentions are are really interesting and I really hope that that it works out. UM. But we'll see.

Because this is it's you're talking about an institution. It's not just something that's been around for a little while. So um, the future will tell us just I guess what we're all about here forward thinking. So, for you guys out there who have suggestions about things that we should cover in future episodes of Forward Thinking, let us know drops the line on Twitter, Facebook, or Google Plus

are handled all three as FW thinking. We look at all of the suggestions, we appreciate them, keep them coming, and we will talk to you again, really soon. More on this topic in the future of technology, visit forward thinking dot Com, brought to you by Toyota Let's Go Places,