[Some amazing links here and some very important points. To be digested, slowly, like ideas passing through all four stomachs of a cow. More anon].

Jason:

An online university strikes me as a great idea, although "proletarian" I assume is the idea, not a proposed title. My limited understanding of this is that online universities, although claiming to offer "courses" and "lessons", don't actually do this. They don't have any sort of institutional substance. They are more geared towards acquiring knowledge and skills, rather than a degree.

Perhaps I haven't followed the full history of your blog on this topic, and not living or working in the UK means I don't have any real interest in the "evolution" of educational policy. But I gather it's bleak and obviously the financial crisis will sooner or later provide some Tory slaphead with the justification for axing courses and universities.

I would be interested in contributing to some kind of virtual university, ambitious in the sense of offering free undergraduate study for degrees outside the QAA framework, or whatever they call themselves these days. But perhaps more conventional than the idea might suggest in key respects. An institution offering the courses and the degrees without fees. A university staffed and administered ONLY by academics. I don't think it would involve that much work (once up and running!) if your staffing ratio was high, although the obvious potential PR drawback would be the lack of accreditation. The Mickey Mouse "download your degree now" allegation. So you use experienced staff and guest lectures (exclusive access whenever possible) from leading academics. Although I fear there may be a problem and a risk under the terms of your existing contracts and vis-a-vis your own teaching unions that would restrict your participation in this. Something like the content of your intellectual work for them is not your intellectual property, but contracted to them. Which means you wouldn't be able to reproduce that in the virtual university, but you'd need to rewrite all new stuff. And this definition of contracted labour your employers would want to apply as broadly as possible, especially if you're in competition with them. Or with yourself? How enthusiastically could you participate in this while still doing your day job?

The other thing to consider would be if you intend to offer a non-fee-paying system then doesn't that concept actually depend on precisely the kind of educated and enlightened mindset that one would hope to inspire in philosophy graduates? It's quite a difficult idea for an 18 year old school leaver to get his or her head around, free education. Everyone, all his family and friends, would figure he was wasting his time. What's the point of a "free" degree? So my approach would be to think very hard in PR terms about how to position this - universally "within" or "outside" - the marketplace. Perhaps I am being too ambitious or underestimating the importance of the idea itself, which in practice need not simply apply to a mass education model. Quite the opposite. But my response to any important idea like this is always instinctively to want to take on the system and win.

Thomas Gokey:

There are lots of great ways for people to educate themselves, provided they
have the motivation and above all the luxury of free time. But part of the
problem is that the most dedicated student will not receive credit for their
education outside of a recognized institution. If learning for the sake of
learning is all someone is after great, but to really replace the current
educational system we also need to find a way to recognize in some sort of
social or legal way that this person should be treated as equal to someone who
got their diploma from a regular school.

I want to tell you about a project that I've started and invite you to
participate if you are interested. I am a visual artist with an amateur
interest in philosophy. I've been listening to a lot of great lectures on-line,
iTunesU, YouTube, reading blogs, etc. I'd like to get a Masters of Philosophy
but for many reasons (financial, career, realistic assessment of talent) going
back to school for a M.Phil doesn't seem to make much sense. So what I would
like to do instead is to create my own one-person fully accredited university.
I want to come up with a program equivalent to what a real university might
provide and approach experts on each subject to collaborate with. The
relationship would be mutually defined in such a way that neither felt
exploited and both felt that it would be worth the effort. This might mean
bartering, the payment of a modest sum, a service rendered, etc. I would read
texts on the subject, find good lectures on-line, and write a paper. The
faculty would read the paper, give a grade, and maybe write a letter that could
be used as I approach future faculty to convince them to participate.
Realistically I think I don't have enough time to take more than one class like
this per term.

When I am near completing the degree, I would like to go through an
accreditation process. I've done some initial research and it seems that there
are enough legitimate accreditation agencies that I could probably convince one
of them to work with me on my terms. Again I would barter or negotiate some
payment in exchange for going through their accreditation process, probably
with some reasonable changes to accommodate the uniqueness of the project.

When I'm done I would design myself a diploma, have official accreditation
paperwork, have letters from leading scholars, and a series of term papers I
wrote that I would use to convince people my self-education should be taken
seriously. I would consider the whole project a work of art. I would also like
to test-drive this one-on-one freelance approach as other people try out their
own experiments with different modes of education. My approach certainly isn't
ideal, but it still seems worth trying and tweaking as I go along.

I'm starting this project in the spring of 2010 where I will be sitting in on a
grad seminar on theories of body and soul from Plato to Descartes at Syracuse
University (where I am an adjunct in the art department)...

Lots of people are probably sending you to The Public School in LA:
http://la.thepublicschool.org/

In the spirit of the Public School except free and located in Minneapolis there
is The Experimental College: http://www.excotc.org/

Also in the same spirit there is a new school started by a friend of mine in
Syracuse that I've been involved in (we are thinking of using "One-Dimensional
Woman" in a reading group) called The Art School in the Art School:
http://www.theasintheas.org/

Sam:

Its "lecture as art practice" trappings aside, it's surprising how useful this simple mailing list has been:
http://platformed.org/

Though its format perhaps opaque to many...

Andrew:

Hi Nina,

Does the University own your lectures? Are you at liberty to present them online (or offline) without their express permission? Some departments might welcome the possibility of luring more students into philosophy, but others would probably object to lectures being available outside of the University (i.e. "You can't charge us for writing and presenting your lectures and then give them away for free!").

PS We're smarter than we think. [This is my favourite line - IT].

Hugh:

Proletarian universities exist! Check out
http://www.anarchistu.org/cgi-bin/twiki/view/Anarchistu
I took a course offered under the aegis of the Anarchist Free University on
"Experimental literature" several years ago. (I subsequently moved to a much smaller
city to get a faculty position, so I haven't been involved recently.)

Face-to-face discussion seem essential to me, contrary to the viewpoint suggested by
mrz. I don't see the point of lectures -- with all interactivity removed, a lecture
seems to have no advantage over a book. It's in conversation that people get to see
how it's possible to deploy the ideas/practices to which they are being exposed.

Matthew:

I'm sure you know of this:

http://nyc.thepublicschool.org/

Combined with http://a.aaaarg.org/ is a nice proposition.

As here in NYC I supplement my theater/writing practice and earn my $ as a yoga instructor, I've always wanted (and yet intend) to have a rigorous philosophic/psychoanalitic seminar that had each session followed (or begun with, open to experiment) a deep yoga practice. Not necessarily for any 'health' reasons per se, but because of the profound solvent effect of yogic practice on the narrative mind, both for better and worse. Come to think of it, solvent in both senses: from the profound state of being-in-debt that thought expresses, to the being-in-the-black that lived experience being embodied is.

Chung:

the open/proletarian uni is a nice idea, but as has already been mentioned, there are **loads** of free lectures going on, at least in london, every night, every week. ok they haven't been filtered for accesibility or whatnot, but websites like http://www.lecturelist.org/ give a pretty good indication of what's going on around the UK, though i admit i've only been using it for london. to get even more london centric (sorry), SOAS and birkbeck have free lectures and free film showings all the time. there is a sort of haphazard curriculum lurking in there already (i've just started trying to piece it together).

instead of proposing that the new entity add 2 lectures a year, isn't there someway for the prole uni to give the existing content some sort of framework?

i like how skittles have have sort of done this, overlaying their own big menu over existing user generated content like flickr, and apparently this was a rip off of this design firm's website, which is admittedly sleeker and more minimal. put aside the advertising pedigree of these things for a moment, these projective menus are a great way of coordinating content whilst remaining separate from it, both cohesive and critical, a bit like what zizek said about the 6thsense device in his apocalyptic times lecture.

more egs

MIT courseware

http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/web/home/home/index.htm

the public school

http://la.thepublicschool.org/about

and his little friend aaaarg

http://a.aaaarg.org/issues

Dave:

1. Other commitments (work, for instance) can make it difficult for people to attend lectures during the day.
2. Often public lectures assume a fair bit of background knowledge - there's rarely a public lecture with the intention of introducing us to the work of a thinker.
3. Something assembled as a genuine alternative to the university, offering a decent education, would generate real interest one the part of both lecturers and students, I think, and open up possibilities stifled in the academy.

I agree Nina that having it online would solve a lot of problems, though what might we lose by doing that?

Giovanni (who's genuinely very interested in this):

'Why do we need a space? Online proletarian university now! Blog, video-lectures, podcast, pdf/doc/PP handouts, direct line with students, etc.
Lecturers could prepare their seminars at home, people wouldn't pay for travels and could attend from any public library at their convenience.
Lack of 'physicality'? No problem: social events in cheap spaces whenever possible (ie, every 3-6 months as Dave suggests).' - mrz

We have one of those I believe, it's called the Internet. Or are you planning to make participants sit exams and issue them with degrees?

Robert:

There is already quite a good website for this, originally quite well-funded, and maybe we just need to use it more:

http://www.lecturelist.org/

You can support it in the various ways listed here:

http://lecturelist.org/content/article/7

a contributor who prefers to remain nameless:

run-riot, who do a weekly listings mailout, just recently introduced a
section called think! - http://www.run-riot.com/think - which is
supposed to be
"the first of its kind; a category dedicated to bringing together the
best of London’s burgeoning intellectual scene, from political debates
to literary lectures and activist workshops."

that's from the press release: I don't know how true it is. I suppose
it's only ever going to be as good as where they get their listings
from originally. But I guess it's a sign that people are trying to get
this information together all in one place.

Jamie:

The Suyu commune in South Korea would be a good example of a PU. It is really impressive. Founded by former democracy activists who took a poststructuralist turn in the 1990s.

More info here:

http://imperfectcomposition.wordpress.com/2009/11/10/the-korean-autonomist-and-poststructuralist-left/

Thomas:

Such a thing already exists here, Experimental College.

http://www.excotc.org/

Classes on everything from winter biking to the films of Bunuel. It's actually been pretty successful, meaning it's gone on or a couple years at least. I'd think in a place the size of London you could easily get enough interest and support for such a thing.

Sam:

http://all.thepublicschool.org/

Maybe an interesting model? They started in Los Angeles but got grant money and are expanding. The organizers in each new city essentially remake the form however they like.