The soaring cost of higher education has put a college degree out of reach for many Americans. There won’t be any class credit — or tests for that matter — but a group called Profs and Pints is connecting students of all ages with affordable lessons.
Through the business, professors and other experts give lectures in D.C. cafes, bars, restaurants and other off-campus locations. So far, Profs and Pints has staged nearly 1,000 talks.
“Never stop learning is what I tell people,” Peter Schmidt, Profs and Pints’ founder, said. “I sometimes joke that college is wasted on college students.”
Schmidt, 61, gave his own college career as an example, juggling a full course load while running the student newspaper at the time.
“I was afraid to take courses that were going to destroy my GPA, so I never took astronomy, although I’m pretty interested in it, but I’m not a strong math student,” Schmidt told WTOP.
Schmidt said Profs and Pints’ model is designed to benefit adult learners, educators and local businesses.
The tickets vary in cost, but student tickets are priced at $15 per person.
The venues don’t get any rental fee in exchange for the space. But Schmidt said the talks are oftentimes held on “slow nights” to get foot traffic into the local businesses.
Schmidt spent two decades as an education reporter before being laid off in 2017. At that time, he decided to make a career change.
“A light bulb went off over my head,” Schmidt said. “I said, ‘Well, what if we literally went back to kind of what Socrates did — just people surrounding the scholar and throwing that person a few bucks to hear what they have to say?’”
A couple of days after clearing his desk, he pitched the idea for Profs and Pints to a local business while visiting a bar with friends. It took off from there.
Schmidt started Profs and Pints in D.C. and he’s expanded the events to Richmond, Baltimore, Iowa City and Nashville.
The business has sold more than 85,000 tickets since its founding.
‘Keep learning and enjoy learning’
The audience gathered by Profs and Pints tends to be invested in learning, he said.
“They’ve got a room full of people who are hanging over their every word,” he said of the speakers. “They’re not glassy-eyed students who were out the night before, just trying to do one class before they go on to another class.”
Past talks have been about physics, philosophy, folklore, animals and a whole swath of other topics.
One past speaker is Michelle D. “Mikki” Brock, of Washington and Lee University in Virginia, who specializes in demonology, witchcraft and Scottish history.
“I’d have her give talks around Halloween that were amazing, an absolute blast,” Schmidt said. “She was funny with her academic specialties, it was like Scully from The X-Files up on stage, basically, and the audience loved it.”
Others are animal experts — including one on raccoons.
“He followed raccoons around in a van and just monitored them and couldn’t interfere with them at all as part of the research,” Schmidt recounted of the man’s stories. “So he was just watching them tear apart garages and cars and everything else.”
Speakers get compensated for sharing their expertise, which Schmidt hopes will help adjunct professors or other professionals who could use the extra income.
He hopes the talks will eventually be hosted all over the U.S. — or even worldwide. He’s looking for venues in Detroit, Ann Arbor, Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Detroit and Philadelphia.
“We have people who are turning away from expertise, they’ve turned away from education, and we’re seeing society kind of screwed up as a result of it,” Schmidt said. “It’s really important to get people to keep learning and enjoy learning.”
Get breaking news and daily headlines delivered to your email inbox by signing up here.
© 2025 WTOP. All Rights Reserved. This website is not intended for users located within the European Economic Area.
