The Academic College Launches

with a promise to transform academia

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: ‘The Academic College’ launches today as a better way for academics to collaborate and share knowledge with the public after lockdown. Through a built-for-purpose interactive web platform and video channel they aim to serve two core objectives — to foster better collaboration between academics, and to create public educational resources to make learning more accessible for everyone.

Remote learning becoming necessary in universities over the last year has immersed academics in new digital education tools. These experiences create huge potential for furthering the profession in new and dynamic ways. But often universities’ institutional control over teaching and research content severely limits opportunities for collaboration and sharing of knowledge. This has contributed to a scarcity of quality public-access academic-level content, allowing dubious ‘academic personalities’ to spread controversial ideologies relatively unchallenged.

The Academic College’s plan to foster more and better collaboration between academics at different universities will allow new, positive ideas and visions for the future to flourish, while filling this educational vacuum with cutting-edge knowledge. The web platform and proposed physical colleges will also help academics to collaborate and work more locally, reducing the need to commute long distances to universities far from where they live* and to conferences around the world.

As part of the web platform:

• Academics will be empowered to become ‘Academic Creators’ by learning more about digital content production through the Academic College network.
• The Academic College will curate, publish, and promote content through the channel, including on social media sites like YouTube, Medium and Twitch.
• As the platform grows, The Academic College will act as authoritative roster and community of ‘Academic Creators’ who will collaborate with one another publicly and freely.
• Academics (and non-academics) can subscribe to gain access to the web platform — with members-only spaces for collaboration, meetings, and access to working papers and new research.

Behind the project are three passionate and experienced academics: Dr Eric R Lybeck (who founded a journal Civic Sociology in 2016 to combat Trumpism/Brexit), Dr Carl Fraser(an architect who works on public space/protest and mapping historical events), and Dr Zoe Bulaitis (who works on the public value and role of the humanities in the twenty-first century).

The web platform and channel mark the first stage of The Academic College’s long-term plan for reshaping academia in the UK for an upcoming generation of academics. Over the next few months, they will be unveiling the basis for how they plan to address the lack of purpose-built physical spaces for itinerating academics to collaborate in their home cities. To begin these plans, they are crowdfunding via Kickstarter with the goal of raising £50,000 by mid-June to secure the first of several disused sites in Liverpool. Learn more about their crowdfunding campaign HERE.

* The Academic College’s research reveals that 27% of the academic profession live far away from their university campus.

About The Academic College:

The Academic College is a social enterprise with a mission to reset and reconstruct the academic profession from the ground up. It aims to bring back the spirit and fun of learning, and reverse the tide of deteriorating working conditions for academics across the country. Learn more about The Academic College here: www.academiccollege.org