The Minerva Schools at KGI, USA, established as an alliance between KGI (Keck Graduate Institute), an American university and member of the Claremont University Consortium, and Minerva Project, a San Francisco-based company reinventing the university experience for the 21st century, invites applications for its undergraduate programme. You can apply online at www.minerva.kgi.edu. The tuition fee will be $10,000 (approx Rs 6 lakh) per year, which is approximately 25 per cent the cost of tuition at other top-tier, private American universities.
Minerva Project was founded by CEO Ben Nelson in 2011 and received a $25 million seed investment from Benchmark Capital in 2012. An academic advisory board has been formed to provide guidance and includes former Harvard University President Larry Summers, Patrick Harker, president, University of Delaware, USA, Bob Kerrey, American politician and Lee Shulman, educational psychologist.
Minerva includes five colleges — four colleges in the school of arts and science (natural sciences, computational sciences, social sciences, and arts and humanities) as well as a School of Business. Minerva students will spend their first year in San Francisco living in a Minerva residence hall and then will rotate to Minerva-designated housing in up to seven different cities during their four years of study — Hong Kong, Rio de Janeiro, Berlin, Mumbai, London and Cape Town. There will be three levels of engagement — professional, community and co-curricular. Tuition for the founding class is waived for all four years. Fifteen-19 is the probable intake. Application deadline is December 31.