Speaker 1: Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking, and Welcome to Forward Thinking, the podcast that
Speaker 1: looks at the future and says schools out forever. I'm
Speaker 1: John in Strickland and I'm Joe McCormick. So we were
Speaker 1: talking about what we were going to record this week,
Speaker 1: or you know, we like to brainstorm different ideas about
Speaker 1: stuff about the future that'd be kind of cooled. And
Speaker 1: then I noticed that, you know, we needed one. I
Speaker 1: talked about maybe another future of education episode, and I
Speaker 1: had just read an article in The Atlantic which we
Speaker 1: will be referring to numerous times in this podcast called
Speaker 1: the Future of College question Mark, and it was the
Speaker 1: author Graham would It was Wood's experience trying out something
Speaker 1: called the Minerva Project. And so we wanted to talk
Speaker 1: about what the Minerva Project is, how it contrasts with
Speaker 1: the standard university experience as well as other alternatives to
Speaker 1: universities as far as higher learning goes. So in order
Speaker 1: to do that, first thing, one of the premisees that
Speaker 1: the Minerva Project is based upon is that there's something
Speaker 1: wrong with the university system, right. That's like, that's like,
Speaker 1: that's one of the that's one of the first reasons
Speaker 1: for its supposed to you know, one of the first
Speaker 1: supposed reasons for its existence. How could you say that
Speaker 1: you anti intellectual? Uh? Well, I mean, I'm just reporting
Speaker 1: what has been said. But but if I had to
Speaker 1: wager a guess, I would say that, And actually I
Speaker 1: don't have to because this is all laid out in
Speaker 1: the article. It's largely about the problem of cost. When
Speaker 1: it comes to pursuing a degree from from a college university,
Speaker 1: they can be pretty expensive. And yes, cost has always
Speaker 1: been one barrier to access to higher education, but it's
Speaker 1: gotten particularly bad in recent years, hasn't it. Yeah, so, Joe,
Speaker 1: you found this article in Bloomberg about the increase in
Speaker 1: costs in uh in college tuition, and according to that article,
Speaker 1: the tuition costs have increased by five hundred thirty eight
Speaker 1: percent since n The article itself was written in two
Speaker 1: thousand and thirteen, so those numbers are probably even a
Speaker 1: little different today. I guess that's for US higher education. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: specifically the United States. In fact, a lot of what
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about today is going to focus
Speaker 1: on the United States. That's where we live, so that
Speaker 1: tends to be our frame of reference, and it's where
Speaker 1: the Manerva project is based as well. Yes, currently there
Speaker 1: will be other locations for the Minerva Project, assuming everything
Speaker 1: goes well and that it doesn't collapse in on itself.
Speaker 1: So let's say you're a person who looks this whole situation,
Speaker 1: all the great things about college and university and the
Speaker 1: mess that it's in right now. Also, so you see
Speaker 1: it as a trade off. You see, well, obviously college
Speaker 1: and university in America is one of the most culturally
Speaker 1: and economically and intellectually important things I can do with
Speaker 1: my life. But at the same time, you see that
Speaker 1: is so much money, and I might not be getting
Speaker 1: the value that I want out of this investment, and
Speaker 1: lots of other concerns to me, Maybe I can't necessarily
Speaker 1: get into the college I want to go to the most. Well,
Speaker 1: on top of that, there's just the cultural pressure of
Speaker 1: attending college in the first place. And there may be
Speaker 1: people who don't necessarily want to go to college, but
Speaker 1: there is an intense social pressure to go into college,
Speaker 1: even if that's not what you would prefer. So it
Speaker 1: may be that there might be a different pathway after
Speaker 1: high school that would suit you better. Maybe you want
Speaker 1: to go into a trade rather than going to a college,
Speaker 1: but because of social pressures, you feel the need to
Speaker 1: actually go into this other uh area. And that one
Speaker 1: increases demand because now you've got people who don't even
Speaker 1: necessarily really want to be there pursuing those those limited slots,
Speaker 1: and to it means that this person's life gets put
Speaker 1: on hold for however long they're in college, and and
Speaker 1: in the meantime they may be you know, accruing debt. Sure,
Speaker 1: And it's an industry pressure as well, because, especially as
Speaker 1: more job application happens online and more algorithms are sorting
Speaker 1: through people's resumes, not having a college degree to check
Speaker 1: off can get you automatically filtered out of a lot
Speaker 1: of potential jobs. Yeah, even if you might be best
Speaker 1: suited for that job, and someone who has a degree,
Speaker 1: maybe they might be fine at it, but maybe they
Speaker 1: didn't wouldn't have done the job as well as you
Speaker 1: would have had. Then that doesn't matter if that algorithm
Speaker 1: just you know, just because yeah, yeah, you're you go
Speaker 1: into the trash pile because you didn't have this one
Speaker 1: box checked. Okay, Well, now that we've discussed the problem,
Speaker 1: I think we should look at this idea of the
Speaker 1: Minerva Project and see how that compares to what the
Speaker 1: other options are today. I mean, so we obviously have
Speaker 1: traditional college or traditional university, and then we also have
Speaker 1: other sort of strange alternative options like massive open online courses,
Speaker 1: which we've talked about on this podcast before. And then
Speaker 1: there's this new thing, the Minerva Project. How does it
Speaker 1: stack up? What is it and does it really compare? Uh,
Speaker 1: it's an odd duck. It's it's a startup company and
Speaker 1: what it's meant to do is to take the place
Speaker 1: of an IVY League education. Now IVY League for those
Speaker 1: who are not in the United States, IVY League refers
Speaker 1: to a group of eight different colleges in the northeastern
Speaker 1: United States that are known for being incredibly selective, prestigious.
Speaker 1: They're they're considered to be uh, you know, a degree
Speaker 1: from one of these institutions is considered to be a
Speaker 1: very high achievement. Uh. When I say very selective, I'm
Speaker 1: talking about sometimes they're they're uh accepting that the only
Speaker 1: accept six percent, like some of the one of the
Speaker 1: colleges in particular, six percent is how many out of
Speaker 1: all the people who apply they get they get Uh, accepted.
Speaker 1: Can you guess which one it is? Hey, you got
Speaker 1: it in one. Harvard has a six percent rate of
Speaker 1: accepting new students, meaning percent of people who apply do
Speaker 1: not get in. So there's there's obviously a demand for
Speaker 1: this level of education. There's also a lack of supply
Speaker 1: for that education, which means that this education gets really expensive.
Speaker 1: So a fellow by the name of Ben Nelson came
Speaker 1: up with this idea for the Minerva Project and thought,
Speaker 1: what if we were to create a new institution that
Speaker 1: could give an Ivy League level education to students for
Speaker 1: far less money than what it would cost to attend
Speaker 1: one of these colleges. Uh. Not all of the issues
Speaker 1: are solved. For example, the issue about a limited number
Speaker 1: of slots is very much not solved by the Minerva
Speaker 1: Project because they limit their entire class to thirty people,
Speaker 1: Which I mean, that's it thirty that's that's thirty slots
Speaker 1: for the entire project, Like graduating class. Yeah, you're graduating
Speaker 1: class is thirty people. So if we're talking about the
Speaker 1: pros and cons of the idea of the Minerva Project,
Speaker 1: is the future of education? Really we're talking about it's
Speaker 1: sort of model, not its specific right, because because it
Speaker 1: is technically a single private college that is very very small, Yes,
Speaker 1: extremely exclusive as it turns out, UM. And also yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not scalable by its very nature. What the Minerva
Speaker 1: Project is cannot scale larger. Based upon the approach they're
Speaker 1: wanting to take with a teacher to student relationships, well,
Speaker 1: they are hoping to gale it up to hire enough
Speaker 1: teachers to be able to provide for more students. But
Speaker 1: when you've got a when you've got a class limits
Speaker 1: size of nineteen, you cannot have more than nineteen people
Speaker 1: enrolled in a single class. You rapidly reach a point where,
Speaker 1: unless you have grown to gargantuan levels, you're not going
Speaker 1: to have enough faculty to support the number of students
Speaker 1: that would be needed to fill out you know, you know,
Speaker 1: a class of a hundred thousand or something that you
Speaker 1: might see in an enormous university. UM. But at any rate,
Speaker 1: Minerva Project, the model is what we really need to
Speaker 1: focus on. Okay, but let's hear the story. What's the
Speaker 1: story of the Minerva Project. So Nelson, he comes up
Speaker 1: with this idea. He, by the way, had come from
Speaker 1: an interesting background. He had been the president of a uh,
Speaker 1: a company called Snapfish. Have you heard of it? Online
Speaker 1: photo sharing? Yeah? So he was president of that, uh.
Speaker 1: And then that company got bought by another little company
Speaker 1: called HP good Packard. Yeah so uh. He fresh with cash,
Speaker 1: had thought about this for a while, about the idea
Speaker 1: of creating a private, for profit company that essentially sells
Speaker 1: an ivy League level education, meaning that you would actually,
Speaker 1: you know, you would as a student have to do
Speaker 1: the work. It's not like they're selling a degree. It's
Speaker 1: not a it's not some sort of diploma factory. It's
Speaker 1: not like that, but that it would take the place
Speaker 1: of what he thought of as an antiquated system. And
Speaker 1: we have more to say about that a little bit
Speaker 1: later too. So uh. At any rate, the he had
Speaker 1: a round of venture funding held back in two thousand twelve,
Speaker 1: raised about twenty five million dollars to really develop this
Speaker 1: idea and partnered with the Keck Graduate Institute kg I
Speaker 1: to actually develop the curriculum and structure this institution, which
Speaker 1: is very small right now, I mean with thirty incoming
Speaker 1: class members. Keep in mind this is for two fourteen,
Speaker 1: So for the year of two thousand fourteen, there will
Speaker 1: only be thirty people kind of running through it. Think
Speaker 1: of it like a pilot program. Uh, they're given a
Speaker 1: free ride for this particular project, a four year, four
Speaker 1: year free scholarship for the thirty people that would in
Speaker 1: exchange for kind of being a psych experiment. Yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, the considering that I think only
Speaker 1: two of their actual degrees are accredited right now. Uh,
Speaker 1: it might be a bit of a gamble. I mean,
Speaker 1: unless you're majoring in one of those two, in which
Speaker 1: case you're like suck as um because you're like, I've
Speaker 1: already got my degree accredited, I just have to earn
Speaker 1: it now. Uh. But at any rate, it's it's definitely
Speaker 1: going to be an interesting experiment. Now, normally it would
Speaker 1: cost ten thousand dollars a year to attend this particular school,
Speaker 1: which is much much lower than one of the Ivy
Speaker 1: League college certainly at that that that rivals. And I
Speaker 1: went to college ten years ago, my my public school education.
Speaker 1: So yeah, see when I went to college, it cost
Speaker 1: you a song and a sandwich. That's how long ago
Speaker 1: it was. Now it was significantly expensive at any rate. Uh,
Speaker 1: Like if you wanted to go seriously, how much did
Speaker 1: you pay in shekels? Actually it was these giant stone
Speaker 1: coins that took forty men to roll down, and that's
Speaker 1: why Athens streets are in such bad repair these days.
Speaker 1: People paying for their No, no, that was the year
Speaker 1: before me. At any rate, UM, so ten thousand dollars
Speaker 1: a year is significantly less expensive than say, if you
Speaker 1: were going to Harvard. Harvard, by the way, UH in
Speaker 1: two thousand fourteen, a year at Harvard costs just tuition
Speaker 1: alone cost forty three thousand dollars ninety three thousand nine
Speaker 1: or thirty eight dollars. Then you have to tack on
Speaker 1: another fourteen thousand, six d sixty nine dollars for room
Speaker 1: and board, which ends up for one year being fifty
Speaker 1: eight thousand, six hundred seven dollars. That's one year at Harvard.
Speaker 1: So a ten thousand dollar versus fifty eight thousand dollars,
Speaker 1: you can easily see the difference. But um then you know,
Speaker 1: getting back to the story of the Minerva project. UH.
Speaker 1: Once he had made this decision and the and partnered
Speaker 1: with k g I and they got this this funding,
Speaker 1: they started looking around to find the people who would
Speaker 1: be in charge of developing the actual courses that students
Speaker 1: would take and right now. It's it's pretty much an
Speaker 1: elite group of of uh, you know, talk about celebrity faculty.
Speaker 1: You've got some celebrities on this one. So the dean
Speaker 1: of the faculty is Stephen Kostlin, who is the the
Speaker 1: former dean or a a former dean at Harvard University.
Speaker 1: Um specialty is in cognitive psychology and neuroscience. Then you
Speaker 1: have other people like Diane F. Halpern, who's Dean of
Speaker 1: Social Studies and as a former president of the American
Speaker 1: Psychological Association a p A YEP, Eric Bonnabo, who is
Speaker 1: Dean of Computational Sciences and founder of Ico System Corporation,
Speaker 1: which does really complicated problem solving stuff using math to
Speaker 1: a point that's uncomfortable for me. And then you have
Speaker 1: James D. Sterling, who's Dean of Natural Sciences and a
Speaker 1: founding member of the Keck Graduate Institute. Then you've got
Speaker 1: Daniel Levitton, who is Dean of Arts and Humanities and
Speaker 1: the director of the Laboratory for Music, Perception, Cognition and
Speaker 1: Expertise at McGill University. And they do, like you said, Lauren,
Speaker 1: they plan on hiring more faculty in the next couple
Speaker 1: of years. To bless out that group. But this is
Speaker 1: already a pretty you know, rock star kind of ensemble
Speaker 1: that they've got together. I'm imagine that's where a lot
Speaker 1: of that twenty million dollars is going to right now. Um,
Speaker 1: although probably not a huge amount of that because there
Speaker 1: are other costs that you have to associate with this.
Speaker 1: Unlike a massive open online course, there is actually a
Speaker 1: physical location associated with this particular college, right right, there's
Speaker 1: a couple of physical locations I believe, or they're working
Speaker 1: towards that. There is a dorm which the students live in,
Speaker 1: which is however, right, However, there's not a campus. No,
Speaker 1: there's no library, there's no gem, there's no dining hall. Well,
Speaker 1: I'm sure that's one way to save money. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that that would be a reason, one of the reasons
Speaker 1: why you would have a much lower buy in to
Speaker 1: get into the Minerva project. Yeah. So I'm interested by
Speaker 1: this because on one hand, it's not like they're going
Speaker 1: for a super cheap option. I mean, there are colleges
Speaker 1: you can go to I'm sure that are cheaper than this, certainly,
Speaker 1: but they're trying to get a higher ratio of extremely
Speaker 1: high instructor profile and quality to uh to a tuition
Speaker 1: that is very low for what you're getting. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: kind of it's a perception of increased value, you know,
Speaker 1: the idea that you are spending far less than you
Speaker 1: would at a place like Harvard, but getting an education that,
Speaker 1: at least they argue, is comparable to what you would
Speaker 1: get if you were to go to someplace like Harvard. Now,
Speaker 1: whether or not the rest of the world views it
Speaker 1: that way is another question, right, I mean this we
Speaker 1: haven't even gotten into what their their plan is for
Speaker 1: their their teaching style, but it's there's a huge question
Speaker 1: mark here, which is that even after this experiment has
Speaker 1: run its course of the first the first class goes
Speaker 1: all the way through and graduates, will those degrees actually
Speaker 1: be valued by outside sources? You know, if you're if
Speaker 1: you're a hiring manager at a company and you have
Speaker 1: someone who has on their resume a degree from Harvard
Speaker 1: and as someone who and someone who has a degree
Speaker 1: from the Nerva Project, are you really going to consider
Speaker 1: those two things to be weighed equally? And that's a
Speaker 1: question that we can't answer yet because it hasn't happened.
Speaker 1: Of course, the more intangible aspect is what sort of
Speaker 1: personal value does it provide to the student? How does
Speaker 1: it figure into your own feelings of intellectual development? But
Speaker 1: that's a that's a harder thing to quantify, and I
Speaker 1: guess the public sphere absolutely to go back to the
Speaker 1: actual value of that degree. Like we mentioned earlier, accreditation
Speaker 1: is a key point in that and tech stuff. Did
Speaker 1: I believe an episode on the accreditation process we talked
Speaker 1: a little bit about it because we've we've covered online
Speaker 1: education before and accreditation is one of those things that
Speaker 1: is it's it's an interesting concept. In the United States,
Speaker 1: the way it's done is that we have private uh
Speaker 1: accreditation organizations, all right, they are not part of the government.
Speaker 1: They're privately operated. They are regional though they can't Yes,
Speaker 1: they are regional, depending upon which one it is that
Speaker 1: may have a regional scope or even a national scope.
Speaker 1: The United States government does maintain a list of these
Speaker 1: different organizations that it considers to be yeah, or at
Speaker 1: least accredited. Yeah. The accreditation services that are considered to
Speaker 1: be quality right there, they're considered to be capable of
Speaker 1: of scrutinizing an institution's offering and saying whether or not
Speaker 1: it actually has value. That's fascinating. It sounds kind of
Speaker 1: like credit reporting agencies. It kind of is. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's quality assurance, is what it comes down to. It's
Speaker 1: like a private uh entity that's providing this major public service,
Speaker 1: right right, and well, I don't know if you call
Speaker 1: it service, but it's turns out to be that thing
Speaker 1: because you know, this is where some of those small
Speaker 1: online private colleges have wound up scamming students because they'll
Speaker 1: enroll a student for you know, a relatively small amount
Speaker 1: of tuition, but by the time the kid gets the degree,
Speaker 1: they realize that no one accepts that degree. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: that's that's one of the reasons why the Minerva Project
Speaker 1: is actually I mean, they are going through this process
Speaker 1: because while the people at the Minerva Project have a
Speaker 1: lot of critical things to say with the way universities
Speaker 1: are run in general and the way that class is
Speaker 1: our run in particular, they do at least acknowledge that
Speaker 1: there is value to this accreditation, or at least that
Speaker 1: the rest of the world places value in it. So
Speaker 1: you have to play the game, right. If you don't
Speaker 1: play the game, then it doesn't really matter how well
Speaker 1: you you do the Uh, the course work. It doesn't
Speaker 1: matter how well you design it or how well you
Speaker 1: implement it, because if no one else values it, then
Speaker 1: you your customers. Your students are right where they were
Speaker 1: before they enrolled, and that actually there. Depending upon whether
Speaker 1: or not they had to pay, they may be poorer
Speaker 1: for it out. Yeah, now, the like I said that
Speaker 1: first group, since they get a free ride, we'll be
Speaker 1: able to really Uh, you know, the biggest risk they
Speaker 1: have is that they're they're wasting their time. They're dedicating
Speaker 1: time to it, and you know, there's no I don't
Speaker 1: think there's any argument that the students are you know,
Speaker 1: about whether or not the students are gonna learn while
Speaker 1: they're there. I think that they certainly will learn while
Speaker 1: they are there, especially considering that they've got some of
Speaker 1: the leading thinkers in various fields as their teachers. Uh,
Speaker 1: they will, I think very much benefit from that experience.
Speaker 1: So the question is whether or not they can leverage
Speaker 1: the degree, which is kind of crazy when you get
Speaker 1: down to it, Like we're getting to a point now
Speaker 1: where we're thinking, yeah, it doesn't matter if you learn
Speaker 1: anything or not. Why do you do you have a
Speaker 1: piece of paper? Well, maybe we need to re examine this,
Speaker 1: which I think is part of the point. But uh,
Speaker 1: it's it's certainly one of those circular problems like how
Speaker 1: do you how do you qualify what someone's education is
Speaker 1: without that piece of paper, that's the problem. So you've
Speaker 1: got Minerva getting accreditation and it's various programs. Like I said,
Speaker 1: I think two of them right now have been accredited
Speaker 1: and the other ones are still in the process. Um,
Speaker 1: and they have a presence in San Francisco. That's where
Speaker 1: their first non campus location is. That's they have a
Speaker 1: headquarter office there and a dorm. Yeah, so the students
Speaker 1: actually do live in San Francisco, and part of the
Speaker 1: Minerva project plan is not just to have classes, but
Speaker 1: also to do things like field trips to take students
Speaker 1: to different areas around where the housing is. And uh,
Speaker 1: they plan on having locations and other cities like Buenos
Speaker 1: Aires and Berlin are two of the ones that they
Speaker 1: plan on opening within the next couple of years, and
Speaker 1: then further ones in New York, London, I think Mumbai
Speaker 1: is one of them, and then having the students visit
Speaker 1: for certain periods of time, perhaps a semester, perhaps a year,
Speaker 1: different cities where these dorms exist so that they can
Speaker 1: get that international education that a lot a lot of
Speaker 1: universities really do promise the opportunity for but don't always
Speaker 1: follow through with for all students. Yeah, I mean it's
Speaker 1: it's hard to do. I mean, you've got a university
Speaker 1: that has a physical location, and maybe you get a
Speaker 1: chance to study abroad with a partnership program or something,
Speaker 1: but it's not like you have enough money to apply
Speaker 1: for a study abroad program or if you're lucky enough
Speaker 1: to get a grant for it. Right, Okay, So I
Speaker 1: want to drill down and focus on the difference this
Speaker 1: would make in the actual classroom experience. Imagine I'm somebody
Speaker 1: who enrolls in the Minerva Project and I go into
Speaker 1: the class on a regular class day. What is that
Speaker 1: like and how does it compare to a class in
Speaker 1: traditional higher education? All Right, So here's where we get
Speaker 1: into some compare and contrast with mooks. Because if you're
Speaker 1: enrolled in a mook, then use a computer to log
Speaker 1: into an online course and you can do that from
Speaker 1: wherever in the world you happen to be, right, Well,
Speaker 1: in this case, they have an online platform, but you
Speaker 1: have to be at their San Francisco location. But there's
Speaker 1: no necessary there's not necessarily a physical classroom you're going into.
Speaker 1: You log in because the professors can be wherever they live.
Speaker 1: The professors get the freedom of logging in from wherever
Speaker 1: they happen to have their home base. They are probably
Speaker 1: not in San Francisco. Probably not. And so what you
Speaker 1: do is you log into the classroom along with your
Speaker 1: fellow classmates, up to nineteen of you. There are no
Speaker 1: more than that are allowed in a single class, and
Speaker 1: everything is using webcams. Uh, there's a they have a
Speaker 1: proprietary online platform that allows for the class to take place.
Speaker 1: It gives the professor lots of like little bells and
Speaker 1: whistles to control the classroom experience. And you had to
Speaker 1: buy a MacBook in order to be a student, was
Speaker 1: one of the sus. Yeah, yeah you can't. Yeah you can't.
Speaker 1: You don't get one to supply to you. You do
Speaker 1: have to bring your own. And the way it works
Speaker 1: is that you would log in, you log in through
Speaker 1: the software, and you you're in the classroom. Class begins
Speaker 1: and uh. The description in Wood's article was pretty interesting.
Speaker 1: It's very different from a typical college experience. For like
Speaker 1: a a freshman level class at least. All right, so
Speaker 1: imagine that you log in and you're having a discussion about, um,
Speaker 1: some let's say Shakespeare. Let's just say Shakespeare, because that
Speaker 1: was my my focus when I was in college. Shakespeare
Speaker 1: with you? You know, where's your love for Ben Johnson? Oh?
Speaker 1: I have? Would you prefer Milton? All right, let's talk
Speaker 1: about Milton. It's let's say that you're focusing on Milton,
Speaker 1: and so you're you're having a big discussion about Paradise Lost,
Speaker 1: and the very beginning of the class starts with a
Speaker 1: pop quiz. You you've already read the material. You know,
Speaker 1: there's no time wasted in class about that you've read it.
Speaker 1: You're expected to already have uh familiarity based upon whatever
Speaker 1: the parameters were. So they ask who's the coolest demon?
Speaker 1: And you know, obviously it's mammon. At any rate, Uh,
Speaker 1: the pop quiz happens. The teacher can then start a
Speaker 1: discussion based upon people's answers, because you are immediately requested
Speaker 1: to give an answer within you know, it pops up
Speaker 1: on your screen and you have to answer it within
Speaker 1: a certain amount of time. UM, and those answers propagated
Speaker 1: in real time on the professor's screen, and the professor
Speaker 1: can then say, all right, well we have And if
Speaker 1: it's a question that's a matter of opinion, the professor
Speaker 1: might divide up the class based upon the opinions presented
Speaker 1: and say, all right, well this team all represents this
Speaker 1: one opinion. This other team represents this other opinion. We're
Speaker 1: going to have a discussion where you have to be
Speaker 1: able to assert your point and defend criticisms of your point,
Speaker 1: and then it may begin to become an interactive discussion.
Speaker 1: Because the class size is so small, you don't fade
Speaker 1: into the background, right, So it's not like a class
Speaker 1: in a big lecture hall where you might be sitting
Speaker 1: forty rows back in a big theater and you just
Speaker 1: you're your one, your one dot in a sea of
Speaker 1: dots to the professor. No, and in this case, you're
Speaker 1: both your professor and your fellow classmates are looking at
Speaker 1: a screen of everyone else who's participating in the class. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if you're texting, Yeah, it gets it gets really according
Speaker 1: to to would really intense and fast paced and I
Speaker 1: quote here vaguely fascistic. Yes, so it's um, you know,
Speaker 1: and the argument that the Minerva Project folks make is
Speaker 1: that this this type of teaching forces student is to engage.
Speaker 1: It forces them to actually work on comprehending the matter
Speaker 1: subject matter, not just absorbing or being able to recite
Speaker 1: my route, what is going on. They're supposedly going to
Speaker 1: have a greater understanding and appreciation for the course material
Speaker 1: and actually learn how to think, which ultimately is what
Speaker 1: education is about, all right, and also learn how to
Speaker 1: engage with their fellow students. Um For for example, if
Speaker 1: someone was breaking out that class into into two different groups,
Speaker 1: the teacher might ask them to have kind of a
Speaker 1: little pow wow off to the side, and and the
Speaker 1: software can handle that. It can it can handle a
Speaker 1: certain group of kids going off and having a discussion
Speaker 1: on the side and then circling back for a larger discussion, right,
Speaker 1: which is pretty useful, right. I mean, if we've we've
Speaker 1: all been in classrooms where they've divided people up into
Speaker 1: groups in order to have and you all kind of
Speaker 1: shuffle around and move your desks and dirty. It usually
Speaker 1: takes like ten minutes just to get the room rees
Speaker 1: settled and then you have the discussion. It's very time
Speaker 1: consuming and the idea for the software is to facilitate
Speaker 1: that kind of stuff so that it's all automated, where
Speaker 1: you know, you can create these little virtual groups that
Speaker 1: only the people within the virtual group can see and
Speaker 1: hear each other for the duration of however long you're
Speaker 1: you're allowing the discussion to go on and then reforming
Speaker 1: into an overall group and then having a full discussion. Uh.
Speaker 1: The idea is that this way you can have the
Speaker 1: benefit of all of that without the time consuming constraints
Speaker 1: that you would have in a real space and the
Speaker 1: price of the physical presence. Yeah yeah, yeah, So again
Speaker 1: we're getting to the cost to the student as well
Speaker 1: as whether or not what's the most efficient way to
Speaker 1: get this information across now. Uh. One interesting thing about
Speaker 1: this is that the approach they've had, they seem supremely
Speaker 1: confident that it is the superior method to teach and uh,
Speaker 1: which may or may not be true, right. I guess
Speaker 1: I'd have to experience it though. I Mean, it's hard
Speaker 1: to judge just based on a description, but I do
Speaker 1: most definitely think that intensely interactive education is the most
Speaker 1: valuable form of education, like because it's often a neglected
Speaker 1: aspect of education that when we're learning, people are kind
Speaker 1: of like, I need to be learning stuff. I need
Speaker 1: to be learning content, like I'm memorizing factual information about
Speaker 1: the subject matter that we're talking about. But that's only
Speaker 1: a small part of what education is. I think one
Speaker 1: of the most significant parts of education is learning how
Speaker 1: to be part of a particular type of discourse. You know,
Speaker 1: all different field scientific and in the humanities, whatever they
Speaker 1: are sort of have their own language, they have their
Speaker 1: own mode of discourse. And if you're going to become
Speaker 1: educated in those fields, one of the most important things
Speaker 1: is to learn how to talk this kind of talk well, yeah,
Speaker 1: and and be a passive observer in a lecture hall.
Speaker 1: Requires a lot of self discipline if you want to
Speaker 1: get a lot out of it, right, because it's very
Speaker 1: easy for you to check out, Well, it depends on
Speaker 1: the type of learner that you are. Yeah, yeah, that's
Speaker 1: also true. And that's that's another good point, Lauren, is
Speaker 1: the idea that Minerva projects so gung ho on this
Speaker 1: particular approach, which for some people may be absolutely the
Speaker 1: best way to learn, but for others perhaps not. It
Speaker 1: might be too intimidating, It might be it might be
Speaker 1: too off putting, in which case you end up realizing
Speaker 1: you've made a ten mistake. Yeah. I personally, when I
Speaker 1: was reading the description of how this goes, it sounds
Speaker 1: like my own circle of hell, Like I would not
Speaker 1: I would not do this, and is it the circle
Speaker 1: ruled by Mammon? I should have picked a different Okay?
Speaker 1: Also great? Okay, you know what, despite your demonic predisposition, Joe,
Speaker 1: I'm going to continue on with this podcast. Um No,
Speaker 1: the the I agree entirely that that this could very
Speaker 1: well be an experience that is uh, fundamentally unsound for
Speaker 1: some types of people who have different styles of learning.
Speaker 1: And in fact, one of the things I think is
Speaker 1: really interesting is the concept of adaptive learning, which is
Speaker 1: where you've built in a kind of computer software that
Speaker 1: can detect the best ways to teach any particular student
Speaker 1: based upon his or her answers to tests and their
Speaker 1: ability to progress through course material, and that the software
Speaker 1: itself will end up in being able to infer what's
Speaker 1: the best approach, take the course material that exists, and
Speaker 1: then attempt to adapt it so that it matches the
Speaker 1: students learning style the best. That is one other approach
Speaker 1: that we may see education take in the future, particularly
Speaker 1: in uh, you know, like elementary and high school level.
Speaker 1: But there's no reason why I wouldn't continue on to
Speaker 1: the higher education levels too. So certainly, and that's also
Speaker 1: not to say that something like Minerva Project couldn't incorporate
Speaker 1: that kind of software eventually into what they're doing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it would just be it would be a very different
Speaker 1: approach than that sort of extremely intense like interactive model
Speaker 1: that they've they've set up. And keep in mind, this
Speaker 1: was one test course that would took. It doesn't necessarily
Speaker 1: mean that every single course is exactly like that one, right,
Speaker 1: And his course was was specifically about a deductive reasoning.
Speaker 1: That was the the test course he took. UM. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: to go back to the massive open online courses, uh,
Speaker 1: they are very very different from Minerva Project. Right. They are, uh,
Speaker 1: first of all massive, so instead of having a class
Speaker 1: capt at thirty, you may have as many as a
Speaker 1: hundred thousand or more fellow students enrolled in any particular class.
Speaker 1: So it's not only that you shouldn't get this idea
Speaker 1: of the Minerva Project mixed up with moos, but they're
Speaker 1: almost the opposite kind of thing that are opposite ends
Speaker 1: of the scale, with traditional education being somewhere more in
Speaker 1: the middle. Right, And we did do a whole episode
Speaker 1: about them back in June of which is a whole
Speaker 1: year ago, y'all. So so yeah, so yeah, let's continue refreshing.
Speaker 1: Right a year, how much has changed? Wait? No, nothing's
Speaker 1: changed now. Um. One of the things that is the
Speaker 1: big difference, I mean, mouke, really when you look at
Speaker 1: Muka Minerva Project, the one thing that really remains central
Speaker 1: to both is the idea that the computer is your
Speaker 1: method of accessing the classwork. Otherwise they are very different.
Speaker 1: So Minerva Project you go to one whichever location your
Speaker 1: class has been assigned to for that given time. For
Speaker 1: a Mook, you log in from wherever you happen to be. Uh.
Speaker 1: Minerva Project, the class has kept at a very small
Speaker 1: number ninety people. The move. There's no nest, there might
Speaker 1: not be any capital. Uh. Minerva Project is a is
Speaker 1: an attempt to create, like I said that Ivy League
Speaker 1: education in a new format. Whereas a mook may not
Speaker 1: have any kind of college credit associated with it whatsoever. Right,
Speaker 1: it might just be for sort of personal edification. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there are plenty of mook courses that are actually part
Speaker 1: of a paid education course like you could you could
Speaker 1: end up essentially auditing a class that is given to
Speaker 1: actual paying students at some college. But the difference is
Speaker 1: the college students are going to get credit for passing
Speaker 1: that course. You are just going to have the experience
Speaker 1: of being able to see the class and maybe even
Speaker 1: participate in the work that's being done, unless in some
Speaker 1: cases the college allows you to pay an extra fee
Speaker 1: in order to receive Yeah, there are some experimental prototype
Speaker 1: classes that are doing that, where you either pay to
Speaker 1: enroll in the mooke or more more commonly, you go
Speaker 1: through the whole experience. Uh. You take whatever the equivalent
Speaker 1: exams are, you get those graded, and then you pay
Speaker 1: to have that translated into college credit, which you might
Speaker 1: then be able to transfer. If you wanted to go to,
Speaker 1: say a brick and mortar school, you could transfer the
Speaker 1: credits you had already accrued through this process and have
Speaker 1: a leg up rather than going in as a freshman
Speaker 1: with no credit whatsoever, which in the end could be
Speaker 1: a way for you to save money, because in general
Speaker 1: this process is far less expensive than taking that course
Speaker 1: by enrolling in the school. Right, even if you're having
Speaker 1: to pay to get that credit validated at the end.
Speaker 1: Usually that amount is much less money than it would
Speaker 1: be if you had to attend as a student. So
Speaker 1: there's that, and you know it's again they tend to
Speaker 1: not be as interactive, although they often will have an
Speaker 1: interactive forum set up as part of the class experience,
Speaker 1: and depending on the class and the people involved in it,
Speaker 1: those can be very enriching. But you but it's entirely
Speaker 1: self based. You have to be motivated to take to
Speaker 1: take advantage of those opportunities, right, And you know, you
Speaker 1: realize that when you're talking about a class where there
Speaker 1: may be as many as a hundred thousand or more
Speaker 1: people enrolled in it, you are not going to get
Speaker 1: personal attention. It's not a possibility. Right. You're talking about
Speaker 1: the population of a sizeable town taking a course. One
Speaker 1: teacher and a couple of incredibly stressed out teaching aids
Speaker 1: are not going to be able to handle that kind
Speaker 1: of load. So it's a very different experience. Wouldn't that
Speaker 1: be a cool town to live in? This is microbiology
Speaker 1: one O one town. I'm pretty sure they did that show.
Speaker 1: It was called Eureka. I never saw it. No, you're
Speaker 1: not talking about Eureka's Castle now, I'm talking. I'm talking
Speaker 1: about the show Eureka with Colin Ferguson. It was cute
Speaker 1: and it's it's it's a cute show, or it was
Speaker 1: a cute show. So is Eureka's Castle. That's true, It's true.
Speaker 1: Both valid points. Joe, thank you. Um, but yeah, this
Speaker 1: was so so moving on now we've talked about, you know,
Speaker 1: what moos are and how they are different from what
Speaker 1: the Minerva Project is trying to be. What do you
Speaker 1: guys think about the Minerva Project? Do you think that
Speaker 1: this is, in fact, as the title of the article suggests,
Speaker 1: the future of college question mark I. I'm really curious
Speaker 1: to see where it goes. I am kind of holding
Speaker 1: off an official opinion for right now. I am slightly
Speaker 1: dubious based on just this this article in The Atlantic
Speaker 1: and what I've read about it myself, because I don't
Speaker 1: know it's I'm really glad that that Woods article brought
Speaker 1: the Minerva Project to light, and and I'm so fascinated
Speaker 1: by everything that these are saying, because they're clearly very
Speaker 1: passionate about the state of education right now and where
Speaker 1: it's going in the future, and that's awesome. Like more
Speaker 1: people being excited about this and trying new things is
Speaker 1: rad um, if you know, you'll excuse my colloquial parlance
Speaker 1: of our times. But he says things like, we have
Speaker 1: no evidence that lectures are a good way to teach.
Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure that people do research into ways to
Speaker 1: teach and whether or not they're good and who they
Speaker 1: work for continually. Um, So I don't think that's really accurate. Uh.
Speaker 1: He also says that the biggest innovation in universities in
Speaker 1: the past thirty years was to double its costs and
Speaker 1: hire more administrators at higher salaries. I feel like technology
Speaker 1: has done a couple of things in the past thirty
Speaker 1: years in universities, So you know, there's just I kind
Speaker 1: of wish that he had taken a deeper consideration of
Speaker 1: the field that the scientific field of evaluating education. I
Speaker 1: think a lot of it probably also comes from his
Speaker 1: conversations with the people behind the Minervo project, who have
Speaker 1: a vested interest obviously in promoting that. And of course,
Speaker 1: uh Nelson the founder has not been shy about stirring
Speaker 1: controversy and sturing that pot and saying, you know, hey,
Speaker 1: we're gonna we're gonna be right there, side by side
Speaker 1: with you, and then later saying we're going to reform
Speaker 1: all of the university level of education. We're gonna change
Speaker 1: the world, and his his job is to be incendiary.
Speaker 1: That's wonderful. It's it's it's important for the project to
Speaker 1: move forward. It's important for them to get the funding
Speaker 1: they need in rage for this this experiment to happen.
Speaker 1: I'm not criticizing it at all, but I do think
Speaker 1: that that's probably a large part of why Wood's article
Speaker 1: reflects that, because that's the message that's being given. And
Speaker 1: and I'm not even suggesting that they're insincere at all.
Speaker 1: I feel like they sincerely believe that this is the
Speaker 1: superior method to uh in party education, to people like
Speaker 1: to teach people and to have them actually learn and
Speaker 1: have that be effective. Whether or not it's true is
Speaker 1: a totally different matter. Right, it may be, but it
Speaker 1: may not be. So. Yeah, I can see where you're
Speaker 1: coming from there. Uh. Personally, I would love to see
Speaker 1: this project succeed. However, I don't think it's like especially
Speaker 1: using the teaching model that was was illustrated in the article,
Speaker 1: It's really hard for it to be a scalable thing
Speaker 1: because again, you your faculty would have to balloon to
Speaker 1: massive numbers in order to have a huge class. So, uh,
Speaker 1: either you have to have two hundred competing startup companies
Speaker 1: that are all doing the same thing that the Minerva
Speaker 1: projects doing, all with different prices. Essentially becomes a new
Speaker 1: university landscape. Yeah. So it's one of those things where
Speaker 1: I think it could easily become part of the future
Speaker 1: of education. I don't think it's going to supplant it well,
Speaker 1: I mean, I think it certainly isn't going to become
Speaker 1: the widespread future of education, especially because what they're trying
Speaker 1: to do is provide an IVY League level of education,
Speaker 1: which I mean that's just not even well suited to everyone.
Speaker 1: That's not even what everyone wants. And even if even
Speaker 1: if it were, you would be limited by the number
Speaker 1: of resources you could get who would actually be able
Speaker 1: to provide an IVY League level depending upon depending upon
Speaker 1: how you're defining IVY League level. I mean, obviously there's
Speaker 1: other colleges that are not in the IVY League that
Speaker 1: have some phenomenal leading thinkers in various fields, but that's
Speaker 1: specifically the the focus of the Minerva project is you know,
Speaker 1: they took the Ivy League as the the pinnacle, the
Speaker 1: example that they wanted to live up to, which is
Speaker 1: understandable in the United States. Um. Well, yeah, I would
Speaker 1: say in favor, I would just echo again the comments
Speaker 1: already made that that I do think having lots of
Speaker 1: direct conversation and interaction between experts in the field and
Speaker 1: students is one of the fastest ways to get students
Speaker 1: acclimatized to the discourse of a technical or you know,
Speaker 1: or of whatever field. Yeah, and whatever, the community, whatever
Speaker 1: it is. Uh, And that's something that you can see
Speaker 1: students struggling with. I mean, I've actually taught at the
Speaker 1: college level, and there's there's a disconnect they're that goes
Speaker 1: on for many years with a lot of students while
Speaker 1: they're they're trying to get used to the way people
Speaker 1: talk when they're when they're working in a certain type
Speaker 1: of discourse. H I experienced it just in literature. I'm
Speaker 1: sure it's even more difficult when you're talking about one
Speaker 1: of the sciences. Well, jargon everywhere, But yeah, I think
Speaker 1: the future of education, the future of higher learning in particular,
Speaker 1: is heavily dependent upon again how we view that socially
Speaker 1: and culturally, and whether or not we continue to consider
Speaker 1: college education as being uh, you know, like if you
Speaker 1: are capable of pursuing it, then you should pursue it.
Speaker 1: As long as that message is the the kind of
Speaker 1: unofficial message that's given to everybody, we're going to continue
Speaker 1: having this supply demand problem. And uh, Meanwhile, if that
Speaker 1: is also happening in in sync with a economic depression
Speaker 1: where jobs are getting harder and harder to find, people
Speaker 1: are holding onto them longer, they're retiring later, and you
Speaker 1: have this this issue with jobs, then that that raises
Speaker 1: like all sorts of questions about the value of education,
Speaker 1: whether or not it makes sense to go into it
Speaker 1: in the first place. So I think really a lot
Speaker 1: of the factors that are going to determine the future
Speaker 1: of education have nothing to do with teaching at all
Speaker 1: and has everything to do with culture, uh and with economy,
Speaker 1: and that is really going to be the big impact.
Speaker 1: And these other argue it's at the moment are hard
Speaker 1: in the pun academic, I can't believe I said all
Speaker 1: that just to set up the pun. Is that really
Speaker 1: why you said all of that? You gotta wind him
Speaker 1: up before you knock them down. No, I really do
Speaker 1: believe that though. I really do think that that that cultural,
Speaker 1: cultural pressures, and economic realities are going to be what
Speaker 1: really shapes the future of the college the university UM,
Speaker 1: at least in the near term. Long term, who knows.
Speaker 1: Long term, we may see things like the Minerva Project
Speaker 1: become more common and perhaps be a real competitor to
Speaker 1: the traditional university experience, right, I mean, I guess the
Speaker 1: big question is not whether they will whether this kind
Speaker 1: of model will completely take over education in America as
Speaker 1: we've discussed. It's more like, will this remain a steady
Speaker 1: and reliable, small subset of higher education or will be
Speaker 1: maybe a hundred people in the world who can say
Speaker 1: I got a degree from the Nerva project before it
Speaker 1: went under. We don't know. We'll have to wait and see.
Speaker 1: So I'm very curious to see how this plays out.
Speaker 1: And uh, I wish them all the best because I
Speaker 1: think that they're intentions are are really interesting and I
Speaker 1: really hope that that it works out. UM. But we'll see.
Speaker 1: Because this is it's you're talking about an institution. It's
Speaker 1: not just something that's been around for a little while.
Speaker 1: So um, the future will tell us just I guess
Speaker 1: what we're all about here forward thinking. So, for you
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