Blue Scholar Foundation

Problem: Nearly everyone should gain a college-level education, for a variety of reasons, and not just as job training. We have gone too far in that direction. Society now mainly treats college as job prep, as something that should be expensive for the few who go on to receive big salaries. Because it is so expensive, only those investing in a path to those big salaries can justify it. That's wrong on many levels, not the least that it burdens and bankrupts so many while leaving so many more uneducated. At the same time, we are not reliably building character, providing a wide range of valuable experience, and are failing to inspire and focus on meaningful contribution to society and consistently caring for & helping others. In high school and college years, we concentrate young people, mostly isolating them from adults who could help them mature faster and better.

It should be possible to enter the workforce while also continually and reliably progressing toward a complete education. Young people should not be faced with a largely irrevocable choice between work and academics. This is, largely, an artificial and false choice, reinforced in ways that no longer serve us now that alternatives are possible. We should all strive to be, and help others strive to be, well-rounded polymaths, well-versed in multiple realms, without unnecessary constraints and penalties for change.

Solution: The Blue Scholar Foundation works toward everyone achieving a college-level education, eventually, regardless of their starting situation, and generally without debt. This education should seem interesting, easy enough, and be inexpensive, flexible, and rewarding. A person should do this, and actively want to do this, because it makes them more interesting and a much better mate, parent, citizen, and contributor to society through work & support for others. The Foundation provides a platform, directly or through partners, which aims to democratize education by enabling people to create, validate, and verify alternate equivalent paths, exploring efficiency and flexibility goals. We believe in empowering people with a college-level education regardless of their initial situation and without debt.

We believe:

• Everyone should gain self-sustaining autodidactic (self-teaching/learning) skills.
• Everyone should learn to be life-long, independent knowledge explorers.
• Everyone should strive toward being competent well-rounded polymaths.
• People should help each other learn. For instance:
• Each person is responsible for teaching at least two other people. We call this "Pyramid Learning", a type of peer learning involving specific enabling culture & methods.
• We hate the "no person who works a full-time job should live in poverty" discourse because it should simply be that we should not allow people to live in poverty. We gotta let go of this idea that people have to fight to find work in whatever their local situation allows, full of problems caused by others, at the mercy of those who profit at their expense. It is the responsibility of more capable & resourced people to assure a healthy baseline for everyone. Then it is the responsibility of people to build on that.