The global disruptive university, which has one of its seats in Buenos Aires, started working in 2014 under the premise “How would Harvard be if we could develop it today?” Though it does not have a fixed campus, nor exams, its results are already granting surprising results.

Maximiliano Fernández developed a report for Infobae about Minerva, a disruptive university that presents itself as the first global university.

The official story states that everything started when Ben Nelson was studying the history of universities at Wharton School, in Pennsylvania. This process enabled him to realize that traditional universities did not accomplish their goal.

That conclusion led him to leave his role a CEO at Snapfish, an online photography development platform, to fund a different university in 2010. The name was inspired in Roman mythology. That is how Minerva was born.

For years, Nelson worked on polishing the concept. He received advice from elite specialists, including Stephen Kosslyn, dean of the Social Sciences department of Harvard who, disillusioned by the impossibility of changing existing universities, became part of the project. “How would Harvard be if we developed it today?” he wondered.

In 2012, the developed the first investment round, receiving USD 25 million from Benchmark Capital, prestigious fund of Silicon Valley.

The first students were admitted in 2014. They had to go through a rigorous selection process. “It is quite different to the traditional process. We do not request SAT or TOEFL. It has not cost at all, and the entire process is developed online. Our admission rate is close to 2%, lower than Stanford (4.6%), and Harvard (5%)”, said Alex Aberg Cobo, executive director for Latin America.

The admission process has three parts. “Who you are”, which involves providing personal information, education, interests, qualifications. “How you think”: six challenges that the candidate must accomplish. And “What you have achieved”, which certifies the final three years of high-school, university studies and six particular accomplishments. Last years, the university received 21 thousand applications and only 400 were admitted.

The Spanish Alberto Martínez de Arenaza, who currently studies Economy and Politics, applied with low expectations. “I decided to send my application while studying at Glasgow University. I was a little disappointed with my experience at university and wanted more. I found out about Minerva one day before the selection process ended and completed my application at full speed. The pedagogy and the idea of travelling during the entire learning period was really appealing to me”, he states.

During the first year, classes are similar for every student. From the second year on, they start to specialize. During their third year, they work in teams of 3 students. During the fourth and final year, they develop a personal project. “Having the basis of the first years helped me think my field of study in a more interdisciplinary way”, said the Spanish student.

The students live in seven different cities during the four years of university: San Francisco, Seoul, Hyderabad, Berlin, London, Taipei and Buenos Aires. As regards the election of the Argentinian capital, the authorities of the university state that the reason is that “it is a global, cosmopolitan city, with a major cultural offer and quite safe when compared to other cities of the region”. The students live during six months in the South American city and develop different activities with the Ministry of Education, the Secretariat of Culture, with leading companies in innovation, as well as extra-curricular activities to learn more about the city’s traditions.

“The pedagogy is very different. It is based on developing critical and creative thinking, effective communication and interaction. We seek to develop innovative leaders and global citizens”, explained Aberg Cobo. The goal is to provide students with the tools they will need to face unknown problem in the future.

Classes are online and based on neuroscience applied on learning. 90 minutes with 18 students and a teacher connected simultaneously. They leave traditional lectures aside and prefer small groups to which they teach “mind habits and 115 foundational concepts”. In addition, they present a series of major questions, such as “why people commit crimes” or “who is the owner of information”, which do not have a unique correct answer and promote debates.

Ailén Matthiess, 21 years old, from Vicente Lopez, Buenos Aires, was studying Economics at the University of Buenos Aires when she applied to Minerva. She was the first Argentinian student to study at Minerva. Matthiess currently studies Information Sciences, Computing and Economics, because the program allows it. “It is very different to traditional options. For every class, I have to study the concepts we are going to address and get ready by looking for examples and rehearsing the argument of a debate”, she describes.

One of her favourite activities are the “10:01″, cultural meals prepared by a group of local students during which they share their traditions and stories. “They help you to accept differences and be less judgmental”, she says. Meanwhile, Alberto was delighted with Buenos Aires, where he lived from January to June 2016. “It was an amazing experience, one of my favourite moments in Minerva. I really want to go back and even picture myself living there for a couple of years”.

The conventional dynamic between students and teachers breaks down. “Teachers play a very different role, as they do not introduce contents, but enable debate and guide us”, said the Argentinian student. They must be open to discussion and answering questions.

Therefore, the selection process that teachers go through is also relentless. They go through an interview process that, in some cases, are recorded, in order to compare different candidates until they reach the final step: a real class, live, with 18 students who provide feedback.

Once admitted, they are trained for a month and closely supervised. Regardless a certain level of flexibility, each of them receive instructions that divide the class into periods of 10 to 15 minutes; they include surveys, debates, team work, short questionnaires to keep the students on edge. “There are no exams as teachers have a huge load of data about the students”, says Aberg Cobo.

The fact that Minerva does not have exams does not that assessments are not permanent. Their progress is measured during the entire semester using mind habits and learning outcomes. Teachers are forced to provide personal feedback within five days after each class. “Students know what they are doing properly and what they are not”, claims Aberg Cobo.

As regards tuition fees, they are around half the cost of the Ivy Leagues, the elite universities in the United States, even though Minerva seeks to compete with these universities using a completely opposite model. Despite its short history, the university already has data that supports its performance. Prior starting studying at Minerva, every student takes the CLA+, a test that measures critical thinking, problem solving, and written communication, and achieve results that place them among the 78% top results. Once they end up their first year, they are among the top 1%. In addition, Uber, Apple, Google, Amazon, Yahoo, among other companies, compete to attract students to develop their professional practices at their companies.

Originally published by Infobae.