Minerva’s Virtual College Scores Backing to Grow

Career College Central Summary:

The Minerva Project, a San Francisco-based for-profit that aims to provide an Ivy League-caliber college degree for $10,000 a year, says it has closed on the bulk of a $70 million Series B round that will allow it to scale up its freshman class next year.
While many online education companies are grafting themselves to traditional university programs, Minerva began building a college from the ground up in September by admitting an international group of 29 students to its program. Students live in a Minerva residence hall on San Francisco’s Nob Hill, but they go to class in cyberspace via laptops they can take anywhere. The faculty members who lead the school’s small online seminars may be in distant cities, but they’re expected to help the students develop strong analytical skills through intensive discussions and exercises.
The goal of founder and CEO Ben Nelson (pictured above) is to compete with top universities on both quality and price by stripping away all the campus extras that make a high-quality college education more costly every year—the rolling lawns, the swimming pools, the administrative overhead, and the faculty research subsidized by undergraduate tuition.

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