Online start-up to rival Ivy League schools

A venture capital-backed tech whiz is launching an online Ivy League-calibre university billed as the answer to high tuition and low acceptance rates at premier schools, The Daily reports.

Entrepreneur Ben Nelson will have the school, called the Minerva Project, up and running by 2014. The elite online educator already has top educators on board, including former Harvard University president Larry Summers along with former senator and former New School president Bob Kerrey.

Nelson wants to attract top students from around the world to his Minerva Project, a for-profit undergraduate college that will offer rigorous courses designed by academic superstars, The Huffington Post writes.

But Minerva will also require students to teach themselves everything from Spanish to macroeconomics.

Nelson has not yet set tuition, but he plans to charge the first class, entering in the fall of 2014, significantly less than $20 000 a year for an education that he says will rival the Ivy League.