To fix higher education, start small

Naassom Azevedo / Pixabay

Education is a human right, and for good reason. It is essential to human flourishing, democratic decision-making, and the future of the planet. And yet many are now disillusioned with the higher education system. Between repression of pro-Palestinian activism, insufficient climate action, student debt, and increasingly anti-democratic university governance, it is hard to believe that higher education serves its stated ideals. 

Consider the universities’ handling of protest. Administrators have refused to engage substantively with students’ concerns about their institutions’ complicity in the genocide in Gaza. Why couldn’t universities take student demands seriously? Why can’t they even utter the word genocide, despite expert consensus? Have universities entered their own “post-truth” era, in which funding determines fact? 

This behaviour is the predictable consequence of the structure of higher education, particularly the financialization of large research universities. For example, universities take on enormous debt, often for capital projects that have little to do with learning. This debt makes them risk averse. To maintain their debt service targets, they must attract enrolment; to maintain enrolment, they must maintain prestige; and to maintain prestige, they must continue bringing in government contracts and private research partnerships. The result is an institution structurally biased against student demands to challenge government policies or divest from profitable but unjust industries.

Further, university administrations measure success through revenue, rankings, and reputation. Leadership and staff are discouraged from taking controversial stances, largely because they may jeopardize donations. Sessional faculty lose their jobs for speaking out, and permanent professors face incentives that encourage conformity; tenure, publication, and funding all depend on aligning with the status quo. One consequence is that Indigenous scholars, for example, still struggle to have their methodologies and knowledge recognized as academically legitimate. The university, for all its rhetoric of progress, remains a conservative institution, ill-equipped to meet new crises.

Of course, some universities are much better than others in their treatment of student protesters and Indigenous students and scholars, as well as in collective governance and climate commitments. And universities do transform student lives. But I increasingly feel these moments of real education happen despite the state of the contemporary university, not because of it. If universities purport to be places of truth-seeking and justice, they must face the truth about themselves. 

This is not a call to jump ship. Large universities aren’t going anywhere, and it is worth fighting austerity to preserve the study of the liberal arts in higher education (or at least to slow its demise). But we should also be thinking longer term. What programs will be socially valuable as economic shocks, climate change, and authoritarian policies wreak havoc on mainstream institutions? 

This approach to higher education also rejects the separation between intellectual and manual labour, asking students to participate in farming, maintenance, or cooking alongside their studies.

Let’s start small: consider starting an independent summer school. Summer programs make sense for several reasons. First, students see the value in summer programs – pre-college programs, for example, better prepare students for university-level academic work. Second, a summer program can attract students and faculty otherwise committed during the school year. Third, running a summer program encourages engagement with local farming and other outdoor activities. Students can go outside to learn about the places they live and even contribute to climate-resilient local infrastructure. 

A summer school could grow into a “micro-college,” a tiny post-secondary institution first offering a gap-year program like Thoreau College, and then a two-year program like Deep Springs and Outer Coast. These schools follow John Dewey’s progressive vision for student-led education, with students involved in everything from curriculum development to admissions. They are typically place-based, rooted in the land and community around them, unlike many small liberal arts colleges in the United States which do not have a culture of students engaging substantively with local communities. 

Student-led education reverses the hierarchy that defines modern academia. It treats education not as a product delivered by experts but as a communal process of inquiry.

This approach to higher education also rejects the separation between intellectual and manual labour, asking students to participate in farming, maintenance, or cooking alongside their studies. This keeps costs down and could create revenue, lowering tuition. It also disrupts the economic hierarchy in many elite schools, where custodial staff are trapped in poverty wages to serve upwardly mobile students. 

Crucially, these new programs are governed collectively, with students, faculty, and staff sharing real decision-making power. Student-led education reverses the hierarchy that defines modern academia. It treats education not as a product delivered by experts but as a communal process of inquiry. It resonates with Indigenous and co-operative traditions of learning, which see education as a shared social responsibility rather than a credentialing service. 

The main challenge for a micro-college will be to secure land and funding without losing integrity, taking on too much debt, or becoming financially inaccessible to students. Here we can learn from the closure of Quest University in Squamish, which was modelled on the elite liberal arts colleges of the United States. Quest took the path of “build it and they will come” but failed to cover the high costs of its operations and new campus. Instead, we should follow Paulo Freire’s reflection that “we make the road by walking.” Let’s see what we can build with students rather than for students. 

Finally, too much focus on the failings of universities risks obscuring a lesson of student uprisings: students are the future. Their courage and moral clarity reveal that student disaffection is due to the modern university, not the students. The task now is to work together to build institutions worthy of, and designed to cultivate, this spirit.