In recent years there has been growing talk about the need to create a new University. Books have been written and many blog posts have touch on the topic.

There have even been several new institutions actually created both to espouse the conservative worldview all but banished in mainstream academia and to push even harder for a post nation state Citizen of the World future.

Others have explore online and mixed education from idealistic and commercial angles.

But none of these measures have created any serious competition for the big name schools that seem to have a strangle hold on the mindshare of parents and employers.

Undoubtedly, the cost of creating an elite brick-and-mortar institution would be staggering. But we live an era with the largest number of millionaires and billionaires in the history of humanity. The wealth needed does exist and most fortuitously could be amassed from modest number Private sources.

However, this leads to a temptation to wait for a mega-donor to step up with check in hand and give us the directive to "make it so".

Equally seductive can be the temptation to throw up a 501(c)(3) Nonprofit Shell and start looking for small donations. While the initial costs of going this path seem low, trying to do it right without significant capitalization can at best become a massive time sink and at worst rapidly degenerate into an ever growing sea of red ink spewing from the professional fees associated with regulatory compliance. Thus proving one isn't wasting money becomes an initiative killing waste of money in itself.

Realistically, a Full University can't be undertaken on the cheap and the individuals who have the wherewithal to make it happen aren't going to start throwing around the large sums needed to do so without being pretty darn sure that the people who will be spending that money know what they are doing.

In short the only way out this Catch-22 is to do our planning up front, explore the full design space of possibilities for doing something that is not just new and different but qualitatively better in the Higher Education Space, consider alternative scenarios, study the underlying economics, think about our curricula, admissions, and administration, and build a compelling Blueprint for how to move forward that will convince those Millionaires and Billionaires sitting on the wealth we need to invest in us to Forge the Future.

Imagine — A University of the Future, Grounded in the Traditions of the Past, Championing the Highest Ideals of Western Civilization!