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.

旨在提供常春藤水准教育、而收费远低于美国精英高校的一所旧金山初创大学，在投入运营后的第三年已变得比哈佛(Harvard)或耶鲁(Yale)更有选择性。

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的学生们分布于加利福尼亚、柏林、布宜诺斯艾利斯、首尔、班加罗尔、伊斯坦布尔和伦敦，所学课程以在线授课为主。该校将在本周宣布，它从50个国家收到了逾1.6万份申请，而招生名额只有306个，这意味着录取率只有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.

哈佛上周表示，其2020级的申请人达到3.9万，录取率只有5.2%，创下最低纪录，使其成为常青藤大学中最有选择性的学府。耶鲁大学的录取率为6.3%，而不在传统常春藤大学之列的斯坦福大学(Stanford)的录取率为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提供高强度的营利性本科课程。对该校的兴趣突显学生越来越倾向于避开学费日益昂贵的美国高校，宁愿选择它们的替代品。Minerva是反思传统教育模式的多项努力之一；这些努力包括巨大的开放式在线课程(Mooc)，以及商学院的沉浸式创业替代品，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.

高校学费的涨幅远远超过通胀，美国学生的债务已从2008年的6000亿美元增至2015年底的逾1.2万亿美元，增幅超过一倍。这使得高等教育成本成了2016年大选竞选活动的主题之一，与希拉里•克林顿(Hillary Clinton)角逐民主党总统候选人提名的伯尼•桑德斯(Bernie Sanders)以公立学院和大学免学费的承诺动员年轻选民。

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没有运动队、图书馆或其它有利于提高传统大学的声望、但导致费用扶摇直上的开支。该校每年收费约2.8万美元，包括学费、食宿和其它收费，并通过一个非营利性的部门提供奖学金。相比之下，在普林斯顿大学(Princeton)入学的年度成本估计高达6.4万美元。

“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.”

“学生们意识到，高校不能只是依靠他们在数十年乃至数百年打造起来的品牌吃老本，提供一成不变的无效体验，”Minerva创始人、曾经担任Snapfish总裁的本•纳尔逊(Ben Nelson)表示。“就像在科技、服务业、旅游、娱乐、交通，以及你能想到的其它任何领域一样，当一种不可否认的更好产品出现时，人们会趋之若鹜。”

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7000万美元资本，投资者包括标杆资本(Benchmark Capital)和三家中资集团：好未来教育集团(TAL Education Group)、真格基金(ZhenFund)以及涌金集团(Yongjin Group)。它在2014年9月开业，从2500申请人中招收了69名学生。去年，它从1.1万申请人中招收了220名学生。