Home / Philosophy
Philosophy
Knowledge in the 21st century has exploded through innovative technologies and mediums such that it is accessible to anyone with an Internet connection. Massive Online Open Courses (MOOCs), social media platforms, and other channels have flooded learners with information. The deluge of information has, however, vastly outpaced students’ skills in critical thinking, source and context awareness, and problem-solving.
Meanwhile, institutions of higher education and employers alike have struggled to adapt in helping students to hone those critical competencies in a trans-disciplinary fashion — one that emphasizes how broad, cross-cutting intellectual abilities equip learners for their future careers and lives. Nearly 100% of polled Chief Academic Officers at universities reported believing they were doing a good job preparing students for employment while only 10% of employers share that view.
People treat statistics like these as indictments of higher education and search for find scapegoats like the “liberal arts” majors. Employers clamor for more vocational and professional education and concerned parents and students have fled those “humanities” majors in an exodus toward STEM fields to pursue “hard,” technical skills. This STEM vs. Humanities dichotomy exacerbates the problem of capably preparing students for issues and work that is rapidly changing.
Focusing exclusively on either end of the spectrum will continue to produce students, applicants, and candidates devoid of the emotional intelligence, communication skills, intellectual agility, initiative, and ethical compass to succeed in a world in which 9 out of 10 jobs that will exist a decade from now have not even been invented. It also ignores empirical evidence that the growth of liberal arts graduates entering the tech workforce has exceeded the growth in Computer Science and Engineering students doing the same by more than ten percent.
Scholar Launch tackles the following two fundamental gaps in education that, taken together, constitute what Stephen Kosslyn-- former Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard -- has labeled the single biggest challenge in learning: learning something in one context and failing to use it when appropriate in different contexts:
Scaling Access to World-Class Interactive Feedback and Personalized Learning Pathways – reliance on passive acceptance memorization of lecture material without assessment, individualized feedback, and advising that matches the quality of content presented has failed time and time again. Scholar Launch programs occupy the fertile and practical middle ground between MOOCs and one-on-one tutoring by combining the best features of both in an intimate online learning setting.
Bridging the Gap Between Careers and Classrooms - by intentionally designing learning pathways with personalized assignments, projects, and feedback from the same quality of renowned educators you would find “teaching" on CourseEra or EdX, Scholar Launch produces self-reliant, adaptive learners ready for the future of work. All students will appreciate how their own unique hands-on, research-based projects will help develop skills for particular careers, impact the community around them, and be further pursued as a topic independently.