Using wildcards in NEAR in a Full Text Search
Have you tried CONTAINSTABLE?  This includes a Rank column so will give you more visibility of the ranking process.  This worked for me:

SELECT * 
FROM dbo.yourTable t
    INNER JOIN CONTAINSTABLE(dbo.yourTable, FileContent, '"minis*" NEAR "educ*"') ct ON t.yourKey = ct.[Key]
ORDER BY RANK DESC


Update: found the following paragraph in the book Pro Full-Text Search in SQL Server 2008 by Michael Coles with Hilary Cotter


  "...the NEAR operator is basically useless with the iFTS CONTAINS and
  FREETEXT predicates (it’s no different from using the AND operator).
  To get a true proximity search, you need to use CONTAINSTABLE or
  FREETEXTTABLE and restrict the results with a WHERE clause."


Ch3, p67