Slides for a conference paper: http://eprints.lincoln.ac.uk/14342/ We are witnessing an “assault” on universities (Bailey and Freedman, 2011) and the future of higher education and its institutions is being “gambled.” (McGettigan, 2013) For many years now, we have been warned that our institutions are in “ruins” (Readings, 1997). We campaign for the “public university” (Holmwood, 2011) but in the knowledge that we work for private corporations, where academic labour is increasingly subject to the regulation of performative technologies (Ball, 2003) and where the means of knowledge production is being consolidated under the control of an executive. We want the cops off our campus but lack a form of institutional governance that gives teachers and students a right to the university. (Bhandar, 2013) Outside the university, there is an institutional form that attempts to address issues of ownership and control over the means of production and constitute a radical form of democracy among those involved. Worker co-operatives are a form of ‘producer co- operative’ constituted on the values of autonomy, democracy, equality, equity and solidarity. In most cases the assets (the ‘means of production’) of the co-operative are held under ‘common ownership’, a social form of property that goes beyond the distinction between private and public. I begin this paper by discussing the recent work of academics and activists to identify the advantages and issues relating to co-operative forms of higher education. I then focus in particular on the ‘worker co-operative’ organisational form and discuss its applicability and suitability to the governance of and practices within higher educational institutions. Finally, I align the values and principles of worker co-ops with the critical pedagogic theory of ‘Student as Producer’.

1. The Co-operative University:
Labour, Property and Pedagogy
Joss Winn
School of Education, University of Lincoln
jwinn@lincoln.ac.uk
@josswinn
Governing Academic Life conference, London School of Economics, 25-26th June 2014
Download the paper: http://eprints.lincoln.ac.uk/14342/

2. Ownership and governance of HE
“It is in all our interests to support students,
academic and support staff, outsourced cleaners
and others in their struggles to reconfigure the
ownership of the university, and seize
democratic forms of governance the better to
create and distribute the social goods that we
produce collectively, in spite of current
government policies and management
strategies.” (Bhandar, 2013)

3. Why the Co-operative movement?
• Co-operative principles of democracy,
autonomy, education, etc.
• Co-operative schools (Woodin, 2012; Facer et
al, 2012)
• ‘Realising the co-operative university’ (Cook,
2013)
• John Lewis / Trust University / Mondragon
(Boden et al, 2012; Wright et al, 2011)

4. Literature is sparse but roughly divided
into…
• Conversion: Constitute universities on co-
operative values and principles
• Dissolution: Radicalise the university from the
inside, starting with the relationship between
academics and students
• Creation: Build experiments in higher
education outside the financialised sector

5. Conversion
• The main issue with conversion is a criticism of co-
operatives in general: they ‘degenerate’ into capitalist
forms of enterprise. It could end up being a weak type
of reform.
• Mondragon University (Wright et al, 2011) was
created, but offers an interesting case study for
institutions thinking of converting, given its scale and
structure. Though very specific to Basque region.
• Kasmir’s (1996) critique of ‘Myth’ of Mondragon worth
noting. Co-operatives and their workers need to have
and retain a sense of politics and activism.

6. Dissolution
• Turn the institution into a ‘co-operative’ from
the inside-out. E.g.
– Teaching and learning strategy
– Co-operatively constituted Centres, Institutes and
Research Groups
– Co-operatively run modules, programmes
• Could be undertaken formally or subversively.

7. Creation: Worker co-operatives
• My paper focuses on the creation route and considers
worker co-operatives as an institutional form for higher
education.
• Why worker co-operatives?
– Arguably, the most radical form of co-operative
– Directly tackle issues of ownership and democratic control
– Drawing on ‘Student as Producer’ project at Lincoln. Need
to rethink the role of academics and students.
– History of worker co-operatives is closely linked to history
of labour movement and socialism in the UK. Lots to draw
from and lessons learned.
– Immanent critique of capital; pre-figurative of post-capital

8. Co-operative identity
“A co-operative is an autonomous association of
persons united voluntarily to meet their
common economic, social, and cultural needs
and aspirations through a jointly-owned and
democratically-controlled enterprise.”
International Co-operative Alliance (ICA), Statement on the
Cooperative Identity, 1995

9. Co-operative values and principles
The six co-operative values are: Self-help, Self-
responsibility, Democracy, Equality, Equity and
Solidarity.
The principles are: Voluntary and Open
Membership; Democratic Member Control;
Member; Economic Participation; Autonomy and
Independence; Education, Training and Information;
Co-operation among Co-operatives; and Concern
for Community.

10. ‘Basic character’ of
worker co-operatives
World Declaration on Worker Co-operatives, 2005
1. The dignity of work and the importance of democratic self-
management;
2. the free association of workers;
3. that members of the co-operative collectively employ themselves
to undertake the work;
4. the distinction of worker co-operatives from wage-labour and
individual self-employment;
5. democratic decision-making; and
6. autonomy from the State and other third-parties with respect to
management of the co-operative and control over the means of
production.

11. Labour: Against work in the
worker co-operative university
• Marx: Division of labour = private property
• ‘Indirect labour’ = labour mediated by exchange
relation of reciprocal equivalence (‘value-form’)
• ‘Direct labour’ = Non-reciprocal, not governed by
imposed social custom of equivalence enforced
by the State.
• Division of labour in co-operative university
needs to address this through experimentation.
Grounded in pedagogical relationship between
teacher and student.

12. Property: An academic commons
• ‘Common ownership’: Not public, not private but social property
(Industrial Common Ownership Act, 1976)
• “The Co-operative is a common ownership enterprise. If on the
winding up or dissolution of the Co-operative any of its assets
remain to be disposed of after its liabilities are satisfied, these
assets shall not be distributed among the Members, but shall be
transferred to some other common ownership co-operative(s), or
to Co-operatives UK (or any body that succeeds to its function). If
such residual assets cannot be distributed in this manner they shall
be transferred to some other organisation(s) whose purpose is to
promote and support the co-operative movement and common
ownership enterprises. This rule may only be amended by
Extraordinary Resolution.”

13. • Workers are not individual owners with equity
stake but stewards of a commons
• “Members cannot freely alienate their shares in
the co-operative… [has] many of the
characteristics of public property, rather than
simply private property held as an aggregate of
individualities.” (Axworthy and Perry, 1989)
• Mondragon is not an example of this.
• Against alienation of labour but does not fully
overcome it (Egan, 1990; Jossa, 2014)

14. Pedagogy: Student as Producer
“The idea of student as producer encourages the
development of collaborative relations between student
and academic for the production of knowledge. However,
if this idea is to connect to the project of refashioning in
fundamental ways the nature of the university, then
further attention needs to be paid to the framework by
which the student as producer contributes towards mass
intellectuality. This requires academics and students to do
more than simply redesign their curricula, but go further
and redesign the organizing principle, (i.e. private
property and wage labour), through which academic
knowledge is currently being produced.” (Neary & Winn,
2009: 137)

15. A political, pedagogical project
• Kasmir (1996): We should “be sceptical of models that
make business forms rather than people the agents of
change.”
• “If workplace democracy is to be genuine, it seems it
must be premised on activism.”
• Student as Producer inspired by Benjamin’s ‘Author as
Producer’: Emphasis not only on the qualitiative nature
of the product but on the process and means of
knowledge production in the creation of social
relations that are antithetical to capital (wage labour
and private property).

16. • Research-based teaching and learning among
academics and students (‘scholars’)
• Scholars recognised for their respective contribution to
the labour process of the university
• The university is currently a means of production.
Unproductive academic labour is being transformed
into productive labour. Student as Producer is against
the productivist paradigm of the ‘knowledge worker’.
• Not a critique from the standpoint (reification) of
labour but of capitalist labour itself (Postone 1993)
• How can we become the university rather than go to
university? cf. Marx’s ‘general intellect’, ‘mass
intellectuality’ (Neary and Winn, 2009; Virno, 2001)

17. Elements of co-operative curricula
1. Teaching about co-operation – making visible
the alternatives and challenging the social and
economic status quo.
2. Training for co-operation – improving co-
operative institutions and skills as economic and
social resources.
3. Learning through co-operation – developing co-
operative identities, dispositions and habits
4. Co-operation for education – establishing Co-
operative schools, colleges and universities.
(Facer et al, 2012)

18. Postscript: A laboratory for the
production of social knowledge
The Social Science Centre, Lincoln
http://socialsciencecentre.org.uk/
Constituted as a co-operative for free, public
higher education in 2011.
SSC course (Jan-May 2014) on ‘Co-operation and
Education + conference.