Scholarium Background and Goals
Higher education is one of the great gifts of modern life. Colleges and universities serve as both repositories of knowledge and engines of advancement where learning can thrive. But higher education has entered a period of change, even crisis. As tuitions skyrocket and administrators come to outnumber professors at many universities, the ranks of new students are declining. Meanwhile, a culture of “credentialism” has distorted the mission of many colleges and universities, shifting the emphasis toward a consumerist model.
In the midst of these challenges, research universities continue to produce tens of thousands of new PhDs each year, even as the number of traditional academic jobs shrinks. As a result, finding an academic job is becoming increasingly difficult, even forbidding, for growing numbers of talented PhD holders.
Scholarium is a collaborative venture that provides academics with new venues to introduce their ideas to new audiences outside the formal university setting. We take advantage of a fantastic resource: the growing reserve of trained PhDs holders who are eager to teach and passionate about their subjects. Our teachers may be professors or postdocs, independent scholars or recent graduates. Regardless of their position in the academic hierarchy, they come equipped with deep reservoirs of knowledge and a love for teaching.