Higher Education in the Social Economy

This is naked thinking on systemic higher education reform aimed at moving higher education from the capitalist to the social economy.  It discusses use of the existing co-operative service/business model as a plausible global strategic response to the crisis in higher education, with some notes on integrating elements of the professional service/business model.

I hold certain views about the higher education circumstance as backdrop for this reasoning:

1)      The current offending system is composed of a triad of functionaries (institutional service providers/government funding/union labour representation);

2)      No (desirable) new or reallocated money is available to this paradigm;

3)      Academics have a right to earn a living;

4)      Access to (free) higher education is a right of all individuals;

5)      The service provided by academics is authoritative;

6)      Academic labour holds a unique place in the economy;

7)      Higher education is a public good that should be provided in the social (not capitalist) economy; and

8)      Technology in education will eventually replace the service provided by academics (education and research), as it is now doing with the institutions that employ them (universities and colleges). 

I take a biological (not blueprint) approach to the suggestion that the co-operative model (perhaps in conjunction with the professional) be used as an alternative to the triad, acknowledging that a myriad of regional and global influences factor into its actual implementation.

This diagram illustrates the arrangement I have in mind:

Existing Infrastructure and Lessons for Strategy

During the 1920s in the province of Nova Scotia, Canada, where I was born and largely educated, there was initiated a Catholic socialism movement by two remarkable individuals, Fathers Moses Coady and Jimmy Thomkins.  The effort was referred to as the, Antigonish Movement, that among other notable accomplishments helped found the Coady International Institute at St. Francis Xavier University, in Antigonish, Nova Scotia.

During the 1940s across the Atlantic in the Basque region of Spain a co-operative movement was begun by another Catholic cleric with roots in a town devastated by fascism.  The Mondragon co-operative movement started by, Don Jose Maria Arizmendiarrieta, is now one of the largest co-operative federations in the world and includes its own accredited university, Mondragon University.

The list goes on.  These and other examples of co-operative organization for the provision of manufacture, retail, education, banking, healthcare, and other services is reason to believe the same can be done for higher education and research on a grand scale.

There is a network of established co-operatives that have achieved up and down stream as well as horizontal diversification on an institutional, regional, national and global scale.

Among other lessons culled from these success stories, for one co-operative to succeed there needs to be a support network of specialized co-ops, including two important satellites: education and finance.  Where these sectors have been developed and well integrated within and without a federated co-operative such movements tend to succeed.

Along with other requirements for a successful co-operative movement, I would add the following, access to supportive legal counsel and advocacy.  An institution such as the Peoples’ College of Law in, California, might make an excellent co-operative member.  They are a fringe college with official recognition and a solid social benefit philosophy.

Both Mondragon University and the Peoples’ College of Law stand to gain.  If the PCL were affiliated in some way under the MU co-operative umbrella (as part of the Mondragon Co-operative Corporation) then Los Angels based PCL can get a foothold in an accredited university (albeit not for law) while the college brings its unaccredited but recognized degree granting status in law.  There are other grounds for mutual benefit and optimism for such an affiliation: international education ties for both co-ops; cultural and language similarities; access to co-operative funds to expand the PCL and MU, including their influence; and shared principles.

This is an example of the type of federation that would be potent backing for a global co-operative movement in higher education.

Co-operative Principles and Education

Education has always been a necessary feature of co-ops, explicitly built into the Rochdale Principles.   But it has normally been in aid of making co-operatives more widely understood or successful in operations.  The idea is to reach beyond this and expand higher education as a global co-operative movement.

The Mondragon University exception is rooted in decades of vocational, child, worker and adult education programs that prove at least as successful and innovative as public and private versions.  There exist educational exceptions in the US as well where 90 or so secondary teacher cooperative schools have demonstrated the success of teacher owned and operated schools.

Much of the historical credit and technical/strategic support required for such a movement is already available in stellar examples such as Mondragon or Lega in Italy and others around the world, but also in shaken though still deeply rooted examples such as the Antigonish Movement.

There is respect and understanding for co-operative ventures in education upon which to build. Mondragon University demonstrates this with its accredited very small but actual Humanities Faculty (education and media/communication) and along with other mega-federations has a strong co-operative banking system that is active in student and institutional financial aid.  Couple this with advocacy from a law school like the PCL and its socially oriented alumni and more elbow room can be made for higher education in the social economy.

As should be clear to every academic our labour is unlike that typically found in co-operative movements (including educational) - and so is our civic responsibility.  Academic labour is in an important sense distinguished by its authority and place in the economy.  Whether it is the manufacture of prefab factories, the sale of retail goods or improvement in grain yield, academics generate and disseminate knowledge required for success and innovation in these and other sectors of society.  The relationship is basic and solemn.

Pioneers of the co-operative model during the Industrial Revolution made it clear that control of our labour is control of our economy, but also that control of our economy is control of our labour.

Higher education is arguably the master control, with perhaps the most valuable of labour providing the most valuable of services.  Control of this basic economic and social resource must be placed squarely in the social economy, in the hands of academics.  One way to achieve this is to move the resource to the social economy under the protection and direction of the co-operative model.

Notes on Modification

There might be a need or desire to introduce certain key characteristics of the professional model to higher education run as a co-operative.

The salient reasons that independently recommend introduction of the professional model as an organizational and financial alternative to the triad are the same that recommend its use within a co-operative higher education model. 

Consider one reason.

Mondragon University is a remarkable institution with unique operations and reasonable tuition (which is never a bar to attendance thanks to credit union resources), but it is an institution.  It is a means of facilitating higher education on par with the universities and colleges of the triad.  Including its high cost and limited access, we are now painfully aware this model has significant deficiencies that indicate it cannot (and should not) be sustained.

The professional model is a way to lower and better control higher education costs while increasing access to academics - along with response to other deficiencies of the triad - from within a co-operative of the social economy.

Co-ops contain businesses that range in organization from factory operations to cottage industry, and with services in scope from banks to insurance.  The notion of an independent professional academic in private higher education practice should not be barred.  In fact there exist co-operative practices within the legal and medical professional community.

Such an original application of the professional model to academic labour owning and operating medium to large scale practices under co-operative principles is possible and I think preferable to the the capitalist based triad model that now dominates the world scene.