high tech takes another crack at higher end something called the minerva project. we'll sit down with the next ceo ben nelson. plus predictions for holidays and key for 2-year-olds. with reporters tom and john of u.s. today this week on

press:here. >> good morning american. we're going to start this morning with online college courses. they have not worked out as well as everybody has hoped. we had some hesitation when we hear from the manerva project which wants to revolutionize the way college the talked. unlike the online courses, it is not massive and it's not open and it's more exclusive than harvard. ben nelson is the head of the manerva project. though he's getting help from former president. ben, formally an executive is joined by john schwartz of usa today. i'm going to ask you what does an executive from snapfish have any business running a major important university that's going to be as important as harvard in. >> manerva is going back to my

original passion. i tried to form my university, i went to the university of pennsylvania and worked for four years to try to reform the curriculum at the university. i come from a long line of academics and have been working in the academic field ever since, but i took the hiatus and went into the world of business where i realized you could start something from scratch as opposed to trying to reform something within. >> so what is manerva? can you define and how it's different than others. >> manerva is the first ivy league caliber launched. we have taken the liberal arts experience, a intellectual development, of what the classic definition of what a school should be and made it more efficient and made it open to

very, very bright students no matter where they come from. >> where is it? online? taking courses online? do i meet my instructors? >> it's not an online school. it's incubated within -- kgi is the newest member of the cla clairmont colleges. >> it's an actual college. >> exactly. >> it has creditability. >> in fact, probably outside the ivy league the clairmont are the only ones devoted to actually launching new and innovated universities at the very high end and kgi is an example, had a huge impact over the last 50 years since it was founding. manerva is trying to do the same thing. what happens with the student is the students are in a fully residential program. they spend their freshman year

in san francisco and break into co-horts and each co-hort will travel to six different capitals and they start with berlin and then four other cities. all of the classes are the 15 to 19-person seminars. very intimate and high touch and we do all of the seminars online. they think they all live together. just put them around a table. it's easy. but the problem is it's not as effective as what we can do if we have data and can allow students to do things like break into break outgroups immediately. actually track various aspects. if you have a difficulty mastering a concept in one class a professor the next day will know you struggle and can continue pushing you until you

move off of that curve. some things you can't do off-line. >> data driven classification. >> yes. >> i think everyone would agree the future is not going to be what it is today in 20 years. do you think returning to class kl standards and methods is the way this is going to evolve? i don't know if you get a lot of agreement from people outside the ivy leagues on that way. >> we have returned to the classical ideals and done it in a modern way. if you think about the classical education. you have to study greek and latin and 30 years later when you're a ceo you'll see oh, homer, i know who to fire now. that does not work, right? so the idea behind it is that you were supposed to read the grade so you can think about complex systems and get these

habits of mind. rather than just going and reading it and hoping the student abstracts those ideals from great works we do the opposite. we teach the ideals. 129 different habits that we teach all of our students in four massive complex courses. >> and these 129 come from ben? >> none of them came from me. our founding dean is one of the most world's experts in the cognition in the brain. he was recruited by stanford. we recruited him from stanford. >> you got excellent names. it's almost as if -- it's pretty close. this doesn't scale. is it even supposed to scale. harvard doesn't scale. >> it's supposed to both scale and not scale. it's supposed to not scale because we are targeting some fraction of 1% of the world's population. we're focusing on the very, very

best. last year we had a 2.8% acce acceptan acceptance. harvard was 5.9%. but the big difference is -- but the big difference is harvard says when you ask our director of admissions they say it's not that 6% that qualified for harvard. we only had room for 6%. the big difference is we accept everybody that qualifies. the 2.8% is actually really who made the cut. >> right. >> these people, we don't care what country they're from or how rich they are. our kids are overwhelmingly not american because we don't discriminate. more female than male and more middle class than rich because we don't discriminate. >> you have three kids, two graduated, one is at northwestern. >> she could transfer. >> she can.

>> i'll go online with her and talk about it. then we have a 14-year-old. so we start to think about him now. how long is the program and how much does it cost. >> it's a four-year program. room and board is just like any other university. room board is about $18,000. tuition is $10,000 a year. >> that's half of what we're paying for. >> $10,000 a year. how are you paying it? >> we're doing it because we're avoiding the five, you know, worsening of higher education costs. >> one of which is football and sports. >> $10,000 per student per year in college. >> highest paid state employee. >> head coach. >> second is the tenure system which inplates the cost of professors and lowers quality of teaching. third is the amenities race.

building the big campuses. our students live in the city. san francisco is our campus. we don't need to build a museum and hall because they all exist and they're free to be used by the public. the concept of undergrad watts fundi funding -- our national policy in the united states is tax 17-year-olds. we refuse to comply with that. lastly, most universities have the crushing amount of overhead. the cost of administrative staff has i creased far greater than the cost of tuition. >> ben, thank you. i'm convinced. you have not had somebody go all the way through the program? >> no. we just started. >> so in less than four years from now i want you to come back and explain how the first person is getting the job. it's a good question. you went where now?

and it was --was it home school? will be a hard question. >> one of our students asked to do a job with an investment fund in china and we arranged that even before she started. so jobs are the easiest part. >> thank you for being with us this morning. >> up next, a look at the e-shopping season ahead when press:6 here continues. here con. .

. welcome back to press here. analysts predicted e-commerce sales during the holiday season could top $61 billion. several big chains have launched or relaunched their mobile apps recognizing that e-commerce particularly mobile is the thing. john moran is familiar with the ins and outs and helped develop new technology for amazon and now the ceo of reflection which helps companies analyze the online customers. when they started using you, their sales grur significantly. >> yes. >> e-commerce, that's a 20-year-old story at this point and what's interesting this year? >> well, i think the big news in the industry is the extension of the shopping season. it's starting right after

halloween. >> is there like a formal process? >> well, it used to be. we all started on black friday and we had cyber monday and continue there. i think it's good for the industry and good for consumers is we have got more time and really the big shift that's happening with digital consumers in the digital channels is more options for the consumer of shopping the way they want to shop and that's across channels. >> give me examples other than pajamas in front of the computer. >> maybe i don't want to wake up and do the door buster special. i want to do that in my pajamas. >> and there are companies recognizing that. the walmarts of this world are doing black friday online as well. >> i think it's really -- one size doesn't fit all now. this is really the notion that's coming with it's digital consumer. if you read the research and look at the behaviors we see,

what happens is that experience is becoming really individual. very personal. that consumer wants to shop and connect with the brand the way they want to. i think really smart retailers right hand brands are giving those option. it's not just e-commerce, it's digital commerce and that device being with you. >> you're eluding to mobile and how that's changed e-commerce. now that smart phones are ubiquitous, is there anything new this year that speaks to that? >> the story this whole year with the client that is we work with has been the dramatic shift of traffic to the tablet and the smartphone. and unfortunately, generally those experiences haven't been as effective for consumers. >> when you say that, because you're seeing it in the -- in other words, when they're on mobile they buy less stuff. >> they get frustrated and

abandon the transaction. >> the metric is conversion. that's been tough. that small screen which is always with the consumer that's very personal, right, and i see the world through is not a great transaction device today. i think we're going to see a lot of movement and been doing a lot of work with our clients in this area in the years coming forward of making that work. >> what about the influence of social media? if i'm on twitter and people are ravening something they bought or an idea as a gift, maybe i want to take an action from that or threw facebook. is that going to have more of an impact than it's had before and what type of impact? >> yeah. i think it will. the story of retail -- i have been in the industry for 25 years -- the path is never straight. we have to find what works as they transition from a entertainment mode to a shopping mode to a buying mode.

the early work on facebook with the facebook retail stores really -- it didn't really work, right? so the thing that's right for the consumer when they make that transition from i'm hanging out with my friends to shop with my friends, we're going to be going out and i need to get -- >> when you talk about -- given your amazon pedigree what's the time frame for drones delivering? when is santa going to come and drop this stuff down the chimney? >> i can't even begin to answer that. >> google and amazon, this is where there's a high conversion with my phone because i type in sugar cubes or we're out of coffee or whatever, and i hit about three buttons and the next morning it's on my door step. i think that is the greatest

thing in the world. there becomes this customer expectation of fast ship times. >> that's right. and i think the shift we'll see is more on the efficiency side and flexibility. but i think we're going to shift into personalized shopping where the experience is really the experience i want to have where you know, i'm seeing the assertment of goods that i want to. it's the scott mcgrew collection from my favorite sites. it does that kind of implicitly. without you having to do any work. we focused a lot on efficiency in the industry. i think we now have the devices and technology where we can focus on making the shopping side fast and kind of fun and fulfilling. even in the dej tall realm. >> your first client was in the surf shops. you were able to get increase the conversion. it's a surf shop.

what could you tell them that they wouldn't know about selling stuff? >> well, it's so interesting because it's kind of what is old is new again. the surf shops were actually distinctive because they met every customer and talked about what they're interested in and took them to the product areas their wanted to do. they have not been able to replicate that online and that's what they brought the problem to us to do. can we have that experience extend to the online channel where we're doing as good a job online as we can do in that store? >>? 30 seconds how do you make it more personal online? >> we track the preferences of shoppers. it's like following them around the digital aisles and we remember that stuff. remembering everything you have ever touch and thumbs up you have given to one article that you have looked at. what we do is really just present all of those preferences back to you as you shop digitally on any device and any

website whether you're searching for things. >> thanks for being with us. >> thank you. >> up next, you're probably famous. your apple pie or lasagna recipe. how do you cash out when press: here continues.

welcome back. we're going to talk about tea,

the stuff you drink. i was thinking that's a strange departure for this show and realized we have talked about tea and coffee several times including the ceo of honest tea on the left and the founder of blue bottle coffee there on the right to which we will add christine wheeler created of drazle tea. tea for kids. and drazle is the word lizard spelled backwards. you may have seen these. tea for 2-year-olds. and the mother of four wanted to find a low sugar alternative. and she's also with proctor and gamble. for a moment i will allow you your startup story. we all said my grandmother's pasta sauce is so good i could be a millionaire or everybody loves my barbecue sauce, i ought to bottle it. how hard is that? >> it's actually very hard.

that's the one thing i learned. i had this idea and as a new entrepreneur you're full of passion and excitement and you start and realize everything you have to go through. >> what's the tough one? where is it most hard? >> the most important thing you have to have is tenacity. every single run smoothly. but that doesn't happen. things come up. we had a tea kettle put into our packer and ready to produce and they said we want to retrofit that and that's going to take a few months and wii had to delay everything. >> can you explain. >> it's a manufacturer we don't own. >> got you. you contract out and say here's the formula for the tea, make this. >> right. and the whole industry does that. nestle does it. >> how have you made people

aware of it? just the concept of children's tea. >> how is it going to get noticed? because our project was sold at the grocery stores we said our packages have got to look greats. we focused a lot on creating an amazing package that would really pop out. that was one of the most important things to start with. >> you have to get in the grocery store first, right? i'm still trying to -- i can't even -- okay. i got my packer, how do i get into the grocery store? >> you have to have a unique idea and it has to meet a need and you have to do your home work first so when you present to the buyer they're like i can use that. you really want to focus on the larger stores and you hire a broker and salesperson and do your thing. it takes a long time. it was at the trade show a year ago that i met a buyer for a big

retailer and we then had our first meeting in may, a second in august and found out this week we got accepted but the product won't be on the shelf until next march. that was one full year. >> can we say which shelf. >> segway. >> the idea of giving your kids something like that after soccer. what does it taste like? >> more like juice. it's 54% herbal tea. and we heard moms want low sugar. we couldn't go too low in natural sugars. so it's a good balance. it tastes more like juice. >> my understanding is if it's pure fruit juice it's not taxed because it's nature. would you be in the soda tax?

>> no. we have no added sugar in our product. >> even if you adapt the fruit juice it doesn't change that? >> no. >> how do you feel about soda tax in general? >> you want people to be choosing healthier products. i was interested in a tea product for kids because i thought down the road my kids will start drinking tea and not go for the soda. i'm a big tea drinker. that's how i got started on this is choose something healthier. >> do you have a element in how you market or distribute? is there some sort of tech element? >> we do have social media that we do. >> you do hire bloggers? >> yeah. >> you were very upfront. >> how did that work out?

>> great. we got great reviews. we're hiring a company that's providing free samples to people and do a review. >> and your with the moms and fathers, too. >> yes. >> tell me about the name. >> it was important for me that it would be a memorable package. so i thought if people hear the word drazle. i want them to think of something concrete. and you have to check if there's anything bad on the internet. we have to go through the whole process and hire an illustrator that did our character for us. a whole process. >> is there something that you learned from p & g that applied?

obviously bringing consumer markets do. but as a former executive that said i'm so glad i learned this? >> the most important thing it was all associated around the consumer. you looked at the consumer's eyes. just how you bring a product to market. what the packaging is going to say. it's all based on the consumer. even the tiniest item you get from the consumer is a big deal. >> i mean, what as a small consumer did your experience at proctor and gamble you learned that's nothing? >> what? >> what was -- maybe it was badly phrased. what didn't apply very well? >> as an entrepreneur i don't have the resources that proctor does. so i can't look at the data. i don't have a department that does my forecasting for me. >> well, until proctor and

gamble buys it. thank you for being with us. >> thank you. >> press: here will be back here in just a minute.

that's our show for this week. thank you for making us part you sunday morning! . >> announcer: press: here is sponsored by barracuda network. city national bank. providing loans and lines of credit to help businesses grow.

first up, we're headed to greenland in british columbia. and then off to peru with aaron cats. next, we go to the hawaii waterman and surfer kala alexander. then stand up paddle world series finals at turtle bay resort. back off again to the colder waters in british columbia with pro surfer pete devie. over to the big island for the iron man