The University Project
It is encouraging to see a groundswell in bottom up movements challenging the present direction of educational change. The latest is the University project. The project wiki says: “A whole set of forces are coming together to disrupt higher education as we know it – here in the UK, and all over the world.
Pressures within institutions, economic crisis, staff morale, student debts and graduate unemployment challenge existing models. Out of necessity and out of a desire for something better, these pressures are provoking new experiments around the edges, in pockets within existing institutions, or on the outside.
All of this is taking place at the same moment that we’re discovering the social potential of networked technologies, and seeing the emergence of new kinds of collaborative productive spaces – coworking spaces and accelerators, hacker and maker spaces, fab labs and media labs.
The University Project began with the idea that it might be possible to reimagine and reinvent the university, out of the coming together of these forces.”
The project is planning a weekend of conversations and encounters, exploring the past and the future of the university in London on 16-18 October. More details from the wiki.