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The Minerva School, an ambitious education project whose founder Ben Nelson described as “the first elite American university to be launched in a century,” opened to students this fall. With an advisory board that includes former Harvard University president Lawrence H. Summers, the school live-streams immersive seminars to students—capped at 19 per class—for $10,000 a year. Instructional methods are based on cognitive learning research conducted by former Harvard Psychology professor Stephen M. Kosslyn, who joins Minerva as Founding Dean. Students live in San Francisco during their first year, then move together to different cities around the world for each of the following six semesters. FM sat down with the Kennedy School’s Paul E. Peterson, Director of the Program on Education Policy and Governance, who analyzed the Minerva program.

Fifteen Minutes Magazine: Is Minerva accessing a different, underrated portion of the education market by targeting international students?

Paul E. Peterson: Generally, online learning is for those who don’t have access to traditional higher education in the first place, for those on the edges of the academic community. Minerva is trying to go right into the center, which is a very aggressive approach. US education is an export product. Minerva is moving into a market that’s definitely growing.

FM: Minerva purports to be the next leader in higher education, claiming their students develop sharper minds than their Ivy League peers for less than half the price. Is this a threat to existent institutions? 

PEP: It depends on how good the program is. Any school can have high aspirations and a great public relations team, but until they have classes running and testimonials from students, we don’t know what the students’ experiences actually are. Whether the Minerva model is going to compete effectively with the elite universities is definitely a question mark. They don’t have the credentials yet. A degree from Minerva doesn’t have the same value as a degree from Stanford or Yale or Cornell.

FM: How will Harvard respond or change, if at all?

PEP: I don’t see that Minerva’s a compelling alternative to Harvard at this time. Additionally, Harvard has a very substantial discount rate for students from families that are not in the upper 10 percent of the income distribution. But Harvard has also made significant moves into online learning. They have committed funds and personnel and developed solid courses for HarvardX. This may be the most dynamic part of Harvard today. I expect the future is going to provide us with a wide variety of alternative approaches to higher education, not just one model.