BASECAMP
A residential formation intensive for recent high school graduates
Building America's Missing Bridge to Adulthood
The Crisis:
America's Youth Transition Is Broken
62% college completion rate (within 6 years)
38% start but don't finish = wasted time, debt, directionless
30% of students change majors at least once
Each change costs $30K-80K in extra tuition and time
Youth mental health at all-time lows
Anxiety, depression, overwhelm epidemic
College counseling centers overwhelmed
Declining civic engagement
Young people disconnected from community and democracy
Digital isolation replacing real relationships
$16.5 billion annual waste in higher education
Preventable dropouts and transfers
Students choosing paths by default, not design
THE ROOT CAUSE
We Rush 18-Year-Olds Into Life-Defining Decisions
Without:
Time to discover who they are
Tools to think across multiple domains
Physical practices that build discipline
Community that creates genuine belonging
Models of complete human development
The result: Students pick colleges and majors blindly, then:
Drop out (wasted money, lost time)
Transfer (lose credits, add semesters)
Graduate directionless (degree but no clarity)
Enter adulthood unprepared (can't cook, budget, or think critically)
America never built the bridge between adolescence and adulthood.
THE SOLUTION
Basecamp:
An 8-Week Residential Formation Intensive
Not a summer program. A crucible.
Students live together 24/7 for 8 weeks, undergoing intensive formation across:
Physical Excellence
Daily 7:30 AM training (everyone participates)
Athletic discipline and bodily intelligence
Greek paideia: body as teacher
Physical Excellence
Daily 7:30 AM training (everyone participates)
Athletic discipline and bodily intelligence
Greek paideia: body as teacher
Intellectual Development
Seven modes of knowing (quantitative, cosmic, harmonic, linguistic, logical, rhetorical, somatic)
Classical liberal arts reclaimed for democratic citizenship
Socratic dialogue, formal debate, philosophical inquiry