"One possibility is that Minerva will fail because a college degree, for all the high-minded talk of liberal education— of lighting fires and raising thoughtful citizens—is really just a credential, or an entry point to an old-boys network that gets you your first job and your first lunch with the machers at your alumni club."
and I also remember an article about Minerva a few years back where they said they were aware of this effect.
One of the problems with existing for-profits is that because of the lack of tenure and unwillingness to match industry salaries, they have trouble recruiting and retaining high-quality faculty. Especially in STEM, where non-research teaching faculty accept well below-average salaries in exchange for tenure.
If its deans are teaching (not typically the case, but then 4 deans for a student body in the double digits isn't typical either), then Minerva seems to have solved this problem.
"One possibility is that Minerva will fail because a college degree, for all the high-minded talk of liberal education— of lighting fires and raising thoughtful citizens—is really just a credential, or an entry point to an old-boys network that gets you your first job and your first lunch with the machers at your alumni club."
and I also remember an article about Minerva a few years back where they said they were aware of this effect.