For much of the past year, the education entrepreneur Ben Nelson has been pitching the idea of a partnership between the for-profit Minerva Project—his concept for an elite online liberal-arts college—and an established, accredited institution. At least one prestigious college turned him down, afraid that such a partnership would be nothing more than a loophole through which the project could gain instant accreditation.
But on Wednesday, Mr. Nelson said Minerva had signed an agreement with the “perfect partner.” Beginning in the fall of 2014, the Minerva School plans to enroll a pilot class of about 15 at the Keck Graduate Institute, one of seven institutions that make up the Claremont University Consortium, in California.
If approved by Keck’s regional accreditor, the Western Association of Schools and Colleges, the arrangement will give Minerva the official blessing it needs to attract students and will give Keck access to the proprietary software that the online institution plans to use to create virtual classrooms for students around the globe. The deal does not include any financial transactions between the institutions, Mr. Nelson said.
Officials at the Western Association could not be reached for comment on how long their review of the partnership might take. In general, such arrangements have come under greater scrutiny from accreditors that are concerned about for-profit entities’ seeking shortcuts to accreditation.
Mr. Nelson said the first full class of 200 to 300 students is slated to be enrolled in the fall of 2015. The idea is that groups of students will live together in residence halls in cities around the world, and will participate in Minerva’s “intensive” online seminars.
They will pay “less than half the price of tuition at traditional elite universities,” Minerva’s Web site says. And unlike other for-profit ventures that rely heavily on federally backed loans and Pell Grants as a source of revenue, Minerva will not participate in federal student-aid programs, said Mr. Nelson.
Rejection
But before Keck said yes to Minerva, at least one of the other Claremont institutions—Pomona College—said no. And the reasons for that rejection reveal why many in traditional higher education remain skeptical about Minerva’s aims and methods.
Minerva officials approached Pomona in the spring to discuss a similar arrangement, said David W. Oxtoby, president of the highly selective liberal-arts college, which enrolled about 1,600 students last year.
Mr. Oxtoby said Minerva had spoken with “a couple” of the consortium’s presidents, and the company was invited in March to give a presentation to a meeting of the Claremont presidents and academic deans. Afterward, a small group from Pomona, including Mr. Oxtoby, met in San Francisco with Mr. Nelson and others.
“One of the things that appealed to us was that ... their approach is very much discussion-based,” Mr. Oxtoby said. The technology to foster those conversations beyond the Pomona campus was another reason that the college was interested, he said.
Susan J. McWilliams, an associate professor of politics at Pomona and former chairwoman of the faculty executive committee, was also at that meeting. Faculty members at Pomona are definitely interested in expanding the use of online education, she said. And she was impressed by the commitment of Minerva’s leaders to their ideals.
But she was uncomfortable with Minerva’s inability to offer music or fine-arts courses, or science classes that require extensive laboratory work. “There was just this sense that what they were doing was interesting,” she said, “but not consonant with what we do at a small liberal-arts college.”
Mr. Oxtoby said he nixed the idea of a partnership after faculty members expressed fairly widespread opposition. Some questioned whether Pomona was just being used as a means for Minerva to get regional accreditation, he said. Other concerns included the role of shared governance at Minerva, which offers instructors three-year contracts but not tenure, and whether decisions at Minerva would be made on the basis of increasing profits at the expense of the quality of education, Mr. Oxtoby said.
Not a Loophole
Mr. Nelson said that teaming up with a Claremont institution was a “traditional” and “efficient” path to accreditation—Keck, in fact, started the same way, as a partner institution of Claremont Graduate University. Applying for accreditation as a stand-alone institution, by contrast, can take several years, and the outcome is uncertain, he said.
On the surface, however, the two new partners could hardly seem more different. Minerva plans to serve mostly undergraduates, while Keck, which enrolled nearly 180 students in the fall, offers graduate degrees in applied life sciences.
Mr. Nelson said that Minerva and Keck had a lot in common, focusing on interdisciplinary studies and innovations in delivering education. And Sheldon M. Schuster, president of Keck, said that “having both institutions work together is very complementary.”
“They have an enormous amount to offer us,” he said.
Mr. Schuster said that Keck’s faculty members—about 40 over all—were “nearly unanimous” in their support for the partnership with Minerva. Faculty members at Keck also do not have tenure and are given renewable contracts that vary in length. Beyond that, however, there is some disagreement over the role of Keck’s faculty members and the future of Minerva.
Mr. Schuster said he expected that instructors from the Minerva School and Keck would be “pretty involved with each other.” But Mr. Nelson said the Minerva faculty members would have their own dean and, like separate schools at a larger university, would not be deeply involved in setting one another’s curricula. For example, medical-school faculty members at Stanford University don’t have much say in the business school’s affairs, he said.
After the Minerva School is independently accredited, Mr. Nelson said he could envision the institution as another member of the Claremont Consortium.
Mr. Schuster, though, has a different idea. “No,” he said, “I don’t think it will ever be a stand-alone part of the consortium.”
