Life-long Learning Without Life-long Debt By Gary Saunders and Ali Ghanimi

From Edinburgh to Brighton; Britain’s free, alternative higher education network offers life-long learning without life-long debt By Gary Saunders and Ali Ghanimi.  In response to the introduction of increased tuition fees and the withdrawal of direct funding to the arts, humanities and social sciences in universities; a new generation of cooperative and non-fee-charging organisations, which offer free higher education, has emerged across Britain.
Rising up out of the ruins of what the ‘idea of the University’ has become, they are part of a growing global movement against the commodification of knowledge and hope to create a space for people to think about and experiment with alternative models of higher education. Read more…

The Social Science Centre by Gary Saunders

The Social Science Centre (SSC) organises free higher education in the City of Lincoln and run by its members. The SSC was formally constituted as a co-operative in May 2011 with help from the local Co-operative Development Agency. The SSC has no formal connection with any higher education institution, but attempts to work closely with like-minded organisations in the City.
Over the last year, we’ve run an entry-level evening class called ‘The Social Science Imagination’ (after C. Wright-Mills’ 1959 book, The Sociological Imagination), which is an open course run by and for people who want to develop a critical understanding of the social world, and the conditions and possibilities of their own lives, through social scientific inquiry. Read more…