One of the goals of Timefire is to offer Hypatia as a tool to foster a new age of self-education. We are the spearhead of crowd-sourced teaching and learning. We predict that the United States must focus its attention on raising the intelligence and cognitive abilities of roughly 30% of our working-age population in the next 10-15 years in order to remain globally competitive. Our current education system may not be up to this herculean task. We must look to new methods that can catapult the minds of millions that have been allowed to lie fallow for far too long.

In the fall of 2015, 7.7 million adults over the age of 25 were attending university (NCES). What of the other 50+ million people who are falling behind the requirements of our modern workforce? Those working adults can neither afford the tuition, time away from family, or time away from their current low-paying jobs to participate in higher learning. This is where a radical experiment in immersive learning may point the way forward. In light of the glacial pace at which large systems bring change to society, we need a new system that can rapidly deliver results. We believe that Virtual Reality is that medium and teaching device.

Is our solution going to be a panacea? We can’t know with certainty but it is a serious step forward. Self-education through virtual reality will help a country right its listing ship against competitive countries in a battle for information.