Years ago I lived in a communal house. Expenses were divided proportional to income. For those willing to to do this, a house or loft space with 6 to 8 people (more would be better), would free people with those academic skills our late zombie capitalism continues to marganialize (the better to control and confine what is taught to ‘productive’ job training)– to teach and mentor, especially in the arts (the most inclusive definition of what that means) as alternatives to preditory graduate programs designed as institutional income generators.

We need to seriously think about, plan and experiment with education outside the academy– for all the humanities, creating non-hiarchal, student participatory teaching models and measures of competence as alternatives to grades and degrees,  not modeled on existing institutions, but freely drawing on their rescources, becomeing predatory parasites of the predatorys at the top of the educational food chain.

This is not a utopian idea–this is what MUST be done if education in other than science and business is to survive outside the jaws of our corporate masters into the rest of this century. Whatever the personal sacrifices requiered (which more and more, means giving up nothing but the illusion of tenure and financial security), this is the cost of creative and intellectual freedom. It’s time and past tiime to renew the idea of the “free university,” not one modeled on existing institutions, but as decribed here–aa living cooperative communities.  It’s time and past tiime to renew the idea of the “free university,” not one modeled on existing institutions, but as decribed here–aa living cooperative communities.