Co-operative university

I've found myself musing over the last few months, as you do, about the way that our Higher Education system is being funded and the cultural effects that seems to be having on the enterprise: on students, on institutions, on staff and the relationships. expectations and possibilities created or ruled-out.
My own university, Northumbria's history prompted a further sort of reflection. A major strand of the precursor institutions was a set of educational establishments set up by a Congregational minister and his church to serve the educational advancement of working class and poor families. So my musing was about how a university could run without the business ethos taking over and the whole thing becoming a version of service/product provision for customers. Then I wondered what if students were not positioned as 'customers' or 'consumers' -could that be done?

So I started wondering whether a university could be a co-op. All staff, like the John Lewis Partnership, as genuine economic partners in a truly democratic organisation (see also article on the Uni of Mondragon). Students who, like the customers of the co-op shops, could become members and be paid dividends on their fees. Alumni could remain members, perhaps.

The problem with universities in their current form is that they “treat professionals as employees”, he argues. This means that running difficulties and big decisions are seen as “management’s problem”, not “our problem”.
Give staff a slice of ownership and control and they are more likely to take responsibility, [Mervyn Wilson, quoted from here)

I like the idea that students could become members too. Perhaps that could help the Students' Union to find a fuller and renewed role.

There are already co-operative schools in this country and perhaps they could offer us a glimpse of how it could be.

The co-operative trust model embeds co-operative values and principles into schools. These include open membership, equal democratic participation (one member, one vote) and a clear line of accountability from those who manage the schools to those that use the school and its extended services. Importantly this offers schools the opportunity to involve the wider community in the running of the school, including local people, businesses, voluntary groups, charities, parents, pupils and staff through membership of a ‘Council’ or ‘Forum’. The ‘Council’ appoints trustees to the trust which, in turn, appoints governors to the governing body of the school. The Council plays a pivotal role in delivering the trust’s objectives in accordance with the core co-operative values.  (quoted from here)

Co-operative university seminar | The Co-operative College: This approach offers a new take on debates over privatisation, marketisation and the defence of the ‘public university’ It'll be interesting to hear what the outcomes of the seminar are in a few days time.
PS An article pointing to some of the seminar papers here. One of the slides in the presentation cited gives a useful summary of why bother which seems to pull together the various things that have gone through my mind about the topic.

• Disenfranchisement / Alienation of academic labour (casualization, instrumentalism, performativity, managerialism) 

• Challenge to notion of student as consumer 

• Market volatility, competition, differentiation 

• Alignment of values with governance  perhaps benefits performance & bottom line

And another slide notes an alignment of academic and co-op values: "Co-operative values are (broadly) academic values:
self-help, self-responsibility, democracy, equality, equity and solidarity"

See also article on the Uni of Mondragon and the New University Cooperative of Canada.