Wondrium

In 1990, the company was founded by Thomas M. Rollins, former Chief Counsel of the United States Senate Committee on Labor and Human Resources.[3][4] Rollins had been inspired by a 10-hour videotaped lecture series by Irving Younger he watched to prepare for an exam while at Harvard Law School. He never forgot the series and wanted to share the experience with others.[5] He began recruiting professors and experts to record lectures, with the first courses covering psychology, political theory, and Shakespeare.[3][5]

By 2000, the company was well established, with about $20 million (USD) in annual revenue.[3]

In October 2006, the company was acquired by Brentwood Associates, a private equity investment firm.[6] The company’s catalog grew from 20 million to almost 70 million and digitized 6,000 hours of content.[5][6] Sales increased more than 35% the first year and then continued to grow at a double-digit pace.[6] In 2013, indirect distribution channels, including Audible.com, Amazon Instant Video, Comcast Video on Demand, and Netflix were added.[5]

In 2015, the company introduced its online subscription service, The Great Courses Plus, which gave lifelong learners streaming access to the majority of The Great Courses content library through a web browser or iOS, Android, Roku, Apple TV, or Fire TV app.[5][7]

In 2016, the firm was earning $150 million annually in revenue.[5]

In April 2021, the company announced the rebranding of its global streaming platform from the Great Courses Plus to Wondrium.[8][9] Along with the rebranding, the company announced 1,000 hours of new content from licensing agreements with Kino Lorber, MagellanTV, and Craftsy.[9]

As of 2021, content included over 7,500 hours of content in the format of documentary and independent films, docuseries, short-form series, featurettes, courses, and tutorials.[9][10] There are over 1,200 titles with more than 26,000 lectures.[9]

As of December 2019, the company lists the following categories and numbers of courses:

The following academics, among others, have authored courses. This list covers only instructors about whom an article exists.

Courses are offered on DVD, direct Internet download (video or audio), or streaming. In 2018, the firm's competitors included MOOCs such as Coursera and Khan Academy.[5]

The target market for the courses is primarily "lifelong learners".[5] Customers tend to be older professionals and retirees who have had successful careers.[5][3] As of 2018, the catalog included over 600 different courses, ranging in cost from US$35 to over US$500.[5]

The firm sometimes sends recruiters to sit in on the lectures of college professors identified as being good teachers, to assess whether they might be suitable for course development; the best prospects would do a lecture for the Teaching Company, and if enough customers liked what they saw, the company would develop the course.[3] Professors submit detailed outlines for each course, and company personnel would work with them to make sure that each 30 minute lecture was coherent and logical.[3]

The production quality of the courses is "a cut above" free courses offered on YouTube, according to a report in The New York Times.[5] Chief executive Paul Suijk described The Great Courses as the "Netflix of learning".[5] Bill Gates has been a fan of the series.[11]

American conservative analysts described the social science courses offered by The Teaching Company as more suitable to general audiences than what is offered at traditional American liberal arts colleges. Noting that the company's audience is not similar to current U.S. college admissions, the indicated result was that the catalog has had less emphasis on issues such as sexism and racism, more common to historical lenses used after the 1960s, to prioritise content that describes "everything the civilization has figured out so far and to discover new things". The conservative analysts further note that the survey format of instruction predominates, with few in-depth courses on Western-specific thinkers or philosophical schools, and more emphasis on covering the fundamentals of a subject, as if it were an introductory college course.[3]

• Mathews, Linda (1996-03-31). "Adult Education; No Tests and You Can Hit Rewind". New York Times.
• Nordin, Kendra (2003-01-28). "From the college lecture hall to your headphones". Christian Science Monitor.
• Sorkin, Andrew Ross (2014-09-05). "So Bill Gates Has This Idea for a History Class..." New York Times.

• Wondrium
• The Great Courses