Abstract
In this chapter, we explore the relationship between housing co-operatives and education, examining the case of the Edinburgh Student Housing Co-operative, the largest of its kind in the UK. Drawing from our personal experience as members of student co-operatives, we show that co-operatives constitute not only an alternative way of managing, occupying and using goods such as housing but also important sites of learning that are fundamental for the constitution of a political subject. In this sense, they are new learning spaces. This subject lives by values that not only correspond to those identified by the International Co-operative Alliance (ICA, 2016) but also contrast and, in many ways, resist neoliberal and capitalist conceptions of the individual and education. Perhaps if we move away from notions of classroom education and its conceptions of teacher–student relationships and into other spaces in which subjects may pick up, learn and ‘internalize’ alternative conceptions of being and good living, we may gain a different understanding of education and how it can lead to the kind of transformation necessary for a fairer society. Student housing co-operatives, it is argued, push against the precarity of the neoliberal university for students, and make a valuable contribution to a Co-operative Higher Education ecosystem.
An earlier version of part of this chapter appeared as a blog entry. Credit is also given to Dr. Teresa Macias for her help drafting the chapter.
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Notes
- 1.
It is tempting to suggest, particularly for the most scholarly works, that a critique focusing on characteristics of New Public Management (NPM) and managerialism maps on to existing critiques. On NPM, see discussion in the first chapter of this volume. As examples of this focus, see: Watts, R. 2017. Public Universities, Managerialism and the Value of Higher Education. Cham: Palgrave; Smyth, J. 2017. The Toxic University: Zombie Leadership, Academic Rock Stars and Neoliberal Ideology. Cham: Palgrave; Thomas, R. 2018. Questioning the Assessment of Research Impact: Ilusions, Myths and Marginal Sectors. Cham: Palgrave; Gupta, S., J. Habjan, H. Tutek, eds. 2016. Academic Labour, Unemployment and Global Higher Education Neoliberal Policies of Funding and Management; On debt and student finance, McGettigan, A. 2013. The Great University Gamble: Money, Markets and the Future of Higher Education. London: Pluto Books. It is to be hoped that students will feature more prominently; in any case, student voices have been much less prominent in this field than they ought to be. As examples of mass-market titles, see Collini, S. 2017. Speaking of Universities. London: Verso; Murphy, S. 2017. Zombie University. London: Repeater.
- 2.
NUS. 2018. Class Dismissed: Getting in and Getting on in Further and Higher Education, 45. London: NUS Poverty Commission.
- 3.
Ibid.
- 4.
Trednence Research UK. 2018. Living and Lifestyle: The Student Perspective: Research Commissioned and Led by the Students’ Union Research Group, 3. Unknown: Trendence Research UK.
- 5.
See Raffo, C., et al. 2014. Adult and Tertiary Education and Poverty—A Review. Joseph Rowntree Foundation; and NUS. 2018. Class Dismissed: Getting in and Getting on in Further and Higher Education, 42. London: NUS Poverty Commission.
- 6.
NUS. 2018. Class Dismissed: Getting in and Getting on in Further and Higher Education, 42, 45. London: NUS Poverty Commission. See https://www.nusconnect.org.uk/resources/class-dismissed-getting-in-and-getting-on-in-further-and-higher-education
- 7.
Ibid., 42.
- 8.
- 9.
Butler, J. 2018. National Student Accommodation Survey 2018—Results, https://www.savethestudent.org/accommodation/national-student-accommodation-survey-2018.html
- 10.
- 11.
See Middleton, A. 2018. Reimagining Spaces for Learning in Higher Education. London: Palgrave Macmillan; MacPherson, I. 2003. Encouraging Associative Intelligence, Co-operative Learning and Responsible Citizenship in the 21st Century. Manchester: Co-op College Working Paper 1; and MacPherson, I. 2011. Community, Individuality and Co-operation: The Centrality of Values. In The Hidden Alternative, Co-operative Values, Past, Present and Future, ed. Webster, A., et al. Manchester: MUP.
- 12.
- 13.
Birchall, J. 1995. Co-partnership and the Garden City Movement. Planning Perspectives 10 (4): 329.
- 14.
Birchall, ibid., 17.
- 15.
- 16.
- 17.
Urbed. 2004. A Co-operative Future for Student Housing. Manchester: Urbed. See http://urbed.coop/projects/cooperative-future-student-housing
- 18.
Students for Co-operation is a national body created to help develop and support student co-operatives across the UK. It was founded in 2013. See https://www.students.coop/about-us/
- 19.
The first was in Birmingham in 2014 and see http://www.students.coop/our-network/birmingham-student-housing-co-operative/; http://sshc.sheffield.coop
- 20.
Acorn. 2016. Feasibility Study for a National Body of Student Housing Co-ops, see http://www.acorncoopsupport.org.uk/Feasibility_Study_for_a_National_Body_of_Student_Housing_Co-ops.pdf
- 21.
This national body will also access finance to purchase property freeholds, have equity from existing co-operatives and support from experienced co-operators sitting on its board of directors. It will support a generation of student co-operators by providing a long-lasting infrastructure for students involved in social change and community projects. See https://www.uk.coop/students/about-student-co-op-homes
- 22.
- 23.
- 24.
Interco-operation and start-up support was vital to the ESHC support was from the Co-operative Enterprise Hub, Co-operative Business Consultants, Radical Roots, the Phone Co-op, Co-operative Education Trust Scotland and Birmingham Co-operative.
- 25.
We currently have two unused car parks in our basements. The plan is to turn these into communal space and venues for events. By doing a lot of the construction work ourselves, we can keep costs down and invest in higher-quality materials. It is also a great opportunity to train our members in all sorts of useful DIY skills.
- 26.
See the video Democratic Housing in Edinburgh. 2014. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xsbih_3Rrdo
- 27.
Brown, W. 2009. Edgework: Critical Essays on Knowledge and Politics. New Jersey: Princeton University Press.
- 28.
Freire, P. 2000. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Continuum.
- 29.
MacPherson, I. 2002. Encouraging Associative Intelligence, Co-operative Learning and Responsible Citizenship in the 21st Century. Manchester: Co-operative College Working papers.
- 30.
Freire presents the problem-posing method as an alternative to traditional ‘banking education’ in which teachers transfer information that students must memorize and repeat, and to the Socratic method based on the constant posing of questions and interrogation of students by the teacher.
- 31.
Freire, 2000, 67.
- 32.
Freire, 2000, 62.
- 33.
Mignolo, W. D. 2009. Epistemic Disobedience, Independent Thought and Decolonial Freedom. Theory, Culture & Society 26: 159–81.
- 34.
Giroux, H. 2002. Neoliberalism, Corporate Culture, and the Promise of Higher Education: The University as a Democratic Public Sphere. Harvard Educational Review 72: 425–64.
- 35.
Freire, 2000, 65.
- 36.
Brown, 2009, 40.
- 37.
Quoted in Fisher, M. 2014. The Slow Cancellation of the Future. In Ghosts of My Life: Writings on Depression, Hauntology and Lost Futures, 6–8. Alresford: Zero Books; Fisher, M. 2009. Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? Ropley: Zero Books.
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Perez Ruiz, P., Shaw, M. (2019). The Co-operative as Site of Pedagogy: The Example of Edinburgh Student Housing Co-operative. In: Noble, M., Ross, C. (eds) Reclaiming the University for the Public Good. Palgrave Critical University Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-21625-2_9
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