What is University For?

When I first came to Edinburgh, my expectations of university were mixed and my understanding of the institution limited. Talking with others about what uni meant to us, the ‘I’m just here for the piece of paper’ was a recurring theme. Others argued that attending university was a matter of access, both to people and resources. For others, it was simply the path to academia. Seeing people’s differing expectations, I wondered whether university could have a single purpose. Is University merely a ‘factory of the middle class’, as US activist Staughton Lynd puts it? Overall, I got the feeling that most of us came to uni without really knowing why, viewing it  as another step in the ‘predetermined path’ of life: you are born, go to school, go to uni, get a job. Uni is seen as a means, something we go through to rush down to London immediately afterwards seeking the hottest internship.

After the divestment protests last May, I was struck by my limited understanding of how the University actually works. Who was deciding where to invest? Why weren’t we taught about the bureaucratic machine that the university as an institution really is? The management and governance of the university seemed completely alien to me, and a little research made me even more confused as I ended in a pdf on the General Council’s Mace. That students usually spend an average of four years at University means they are often seen to have no long-term interests in the University, and are thus excluded from much of its decisions. This is closely related to the ‘student as consumer’ model of higher education, associated with high fees and an increasing marketization of the university. Productivism is the University’s modus operandi: economic growth, reputation, and the reproduction and integration of the labour market. Is that all University is for?

The ‘student as consumer’ model is not only reflected in the University’s management and governance but also in its pedagogy. We’re still stuck in the Freirean ‘banking model’ of education, in which the teacher is seen as a god and the student as an empty account to be filled by the ‘knowledgeable’. If education is to be a mechanism for social change, the student must be seen as an active learner, a producer of knowledge rather than a consumer of information. Although this can be achieved to some extent through student-run societies, back in the classroom we are faced with the same old structures of teaching and learning. If we want university to be a place for questioning  established assumptions and structures, its functioning (management, pedagogy, and governance) must be fit for that purpose.

How should we imagine the University of the future then? My vision is clear: co-operative. Look at the Edinburgh Student Housing Coop, the SHRUB, the Hearty Squirrel. They are all successful, alternative models of organisation. They are at the same time sustainable, democratic, accessible, and fair. Is their model unfit for the massive institution that a University is? The people at the Social Science Centre in Lincoln don’t think so, and they’ve started a project based on the concept of the Co-operative University. There are precedents, such as Mondragon University in the Basque Country, which is a real alternative to the neoliberal university. The co-operative university would confront the issues of property and worker control, and would make us more aware of what the University is, how it works, and what its purpose should be. The change of governance and management structures would also need a radical pedagogical framework: the student would not be a mere learner of skills, but also a contributor in the production of knowledge within the University.

There are many ways in which the Co-operative University could come about, but the most interesting is that of dissolution. Dissolution would mean that the different components of the University would progressively turn into Co-ops, and the result would be the University as a ‘co-op of co-ops’. We have already started that process. No more halls, but student housing co-ops. No more EUSA shops, but more food sharing. No more waste, but swapping and re-using with the SHRUB. Why couldn’t also the different school departments become workers’ coops? It would mean more committed staff, and an overall organisational character that put education at its centre by lowering transaction costs. If academics value solidarity and democracy, why don’t we put them into practice?

What a university is for and how it works are closely linked. Although students have different expectations when they come to uni, promoting social change should be the university’s main priority. For this to happen, we need to rethink the way we manage, govern, and teach at our universities. Experimentation is necessary, and the co-operative model has proven a feasible alternative to mainstream models of organising. Universities have always been at the forefront of innovation, being places to imagine the future and criticise the present. A Co-operative education would be an emancipatory education, focused in developing agency among workers (students or otherwise). For it to happen, a change in both  expectation and beliefs is necessary, as some of the practices are already out there and running and functioning successfully.

Further reading: Joss Winn., Stefan Collini, Dan Cook, http://www.ed.ac.uk/chaplaincy/events/whats-uni-for.

Originally published in The Columnist (http://www.columnistmagazine.co.uk/post/130265331865/what-is-university-for)