名額供不應求 美國初創大學競爭常青藤

A San Francisco start-up aiming to offer an Ivy League-level education at a fraction of the cost of elite US colleges has become more selective than Harvard or Yale in its third year of operation.

旨在提供常春藤水準教育、而收費遠低於美國精英高校的一所舊金山初創大學，在投入運營後的第三年已變得比哈佛(Harvard)或耶魯(Yale)更有選擇性。

Minerva, whose students move between California, Berlin, Buenos Aires, Seoul, Bangalore, Istanbul and London while studying a largely online curriculum, will announce this week that it received more than 16,000 applications from 50 countries for 306 places, for an acceptance rate of just 1.9 per cent.

Minerva的學生們分佈於加利福尼亞、柏林、布宜諾斯艾利斯、首爾、班加羅爾、伊斯坦布爾和倫敦，所學課程以在線授課爲主。該校將在本週宣佈，它從50個國家收到了逾1.6萬份申請，而招生名額只有306個，這意味着錄取率只有1.9%。

Harvard last week said it had accepted a record low 5.2 per cent of the 39,000 applicants for its class of 2020, making it the most selective of the Ivy League universities. Yale’s acceptance rate stands at 6.3 per cent and Stanford, which is outside the traditional Ivy League grouping of prestigious colleges, accepts only 4.7 per cent.

哈佛上週表示，其2020級的申請人達到3.9萬，錄取率只有5.2%，創下最低紀錄，使其成爲常青藤大學中最有選擇性的學府。耶魯大學的錄取率爲6.3%，而不在傳統常春藤大學之列的斯坦福大學(Stanford)的錄取率爲4.7%。

The interest in Minerva, an intense for-profit undergraduate programme, shows students’ growing appetite for alternatives to increasingly costly US colleges. Minerva is one of several efforts to rethink traditional education models, ranging from huge open online courses (Moocs) to immersive entrepreneurial alternatives to business school, such as the DO School.

Minerva提供高強度的營利性本科課程。對該校的興趣突顯學生越來越傾向於避開學費日益昂貴的美國高校，寧願選擇它們的替代品。Minerva是反思傳統教育模式的多項努力之一；這些努力包括巨大的開放式在線課程(Mooc)，以及商學院的沉浸式創業替代品，如DO School。

College costs have risen far faster than inflation, and US student debt doubled from $600bn in 2008 to more than $1.2tn by the end of 2015. That has made the cost of higher education a theme of the 2016 election campaign, with Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton’s rival for the Democratic nomination, mobilising young voters with a pledge of free tuition at public colleges and universities.

高校學費的漲幅遠遠超過通脹，美國學生的債務已從2008年的6000億美元增至2015年底的逾1.2萬億美元，增幅超過一倍。這使得高等教育成本成了2016年大選競選活動的主題之一，與希拉里•克林頓(Hillary Clinton)角逐民主黨總統候選人提名的伯尼•桑德斯(Bernie Sanders)以公立學院和大學免學費的承諾動員年輕選民。

With no sports teams, libraries or other overheads that contribute to the prestige of traditional universities but inflate costs, Minerva charges about $28,000 a year for tuition, room, board and other fees, offering scholarships through a non-profit arm. That compares with an estimated annual cost of $64,000 to attend Princeton.

Minerva沒有運動隊、圖書館或其它有利於提高傳統大學的聲望、但導致費用扶搖直上的開支。該校每年收費約2.8萬美元，包括學費、食宿和其它收費，並通過一個非營利性的部門提供獎學金。相比之下，在普林斯頓大學(Princeton)入學的年度成本估計高達6.4萬美元。

“Students are realising that institutions can’t just sit on their brands that they’ve built over decades or centuries and deliver the same ineffective experience,” said Ben Nelson, the former Snapfish president who founded Minerva. “Much like in technology, the service industry, travel, entertainment, transportation, or any other field you can think of, when an undeniably better offering comes around, people flock to it.”

“學生們意識到，高校不能只是依靠他們在數十年乃至數百年打造起來的品牌吃老本，提供一成不變的無效體驗，”Minerva創始人、曾經擔任Snapfish總裁的本•納爾遜(Ben Nelson)表示。“就像在科技、服務業、旅遊、娛樂、交通，以及你能想到的其它任何領域一樣，當一種不可否認的更好產品出現時，人們會趨之若鶩。”

Minerva has raised $70m from investors including Benchmark Capital and three Chinese groups; TAL Education Group, ZhenFund and Yongjin Group. It opened its doors in September 2014, taking in 69 students from 2,500 applicants. Last year, it had 11,000 applicants and accepted 220.

Minerva已募集了7000萬美元資本，投資者包括標杆資本(Benchmark Capital)和三家中資集團：好未來教育集團(TAL Education Group)、真格基金(ZhenFund)以及涌金集團(Yongjin Group)。它在2014年9月開業，從2500申請人中招收了69名學生。去年，它從1.1萬申請人中招收了220名學生。