Saturday, August 17, 2013
The Man Who Would Overthrow Harvard - WSJ.com
I think this is well worth the try.
It's time our higher education system is subjected to new and hopefully cost-effective ideas...
It's time our higher education system is subjected to new and hopefully cost-effective ideas...
In a recent Wall Street Journal, Matthew Kaminski tells us about "Minerva":
"Mr. Nelson, who previously led the online photo-sharing company Snapfish, wants to topple and transcend the American academy's economic and educational model.
And why not? Higher education's product-delivery system—a professor droning to a limited number of students in a room—dates back a thousand years. The industry's physical plant (dorms, classrooms, gyms) often a century or more. Its most expensive employees, tenured faculty, can't be fired. The price of its product (tuition) and operating costs have outpaced inflation by multiples.
In similar circumstances, Wal-Mart took out America's small retail chains. Amazon crushed Borders. And Harvard will have to make way for . . . Minerva? 'There is no better case to do something that I can think of in the history of the world,' says Mr. Nelson."
