What is free education?
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CDE believes that for education to be free in any deep sense of the word, we must fundamentally transform who has access to the system, how it is structured, and what/how content is taught within it.
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1. Access: Access to higher education, and to the University of Cambridge in particular, should not be restricted to a small section of society. University fees must be scrapped, and maintenance grants and hardship funds restored by refunding, rather than instituting further cuts to, the higher education sector. There must be greater support for part-time and mature students. Rents must be reduced. Admissions requirements and processes at the University of Cambridge must be changed to account for the greater barriers faced by students working class and/or people of colour and/or disabled, due to differences in styles of learning or knowledge presentation, lack of access to (well-suited) educational resources, the systematic undermining of their confidence in British society, discomfort in a very white, elitist and ableist environment like Cambridge, and more. For those who get in, greater academic and welfare support must be provided during their time at the university. Social, cultural and political spaces and activities must be organised in ways that do not enact more violence on those who are systematically oppressed in society, and where possible, aid in their survival and resistance to oppression. Access to resources must also be extended beyond the university, by opening up libraries, online materials and talks, setting up more funding opportunities for independent research and emancipatory education projects, and otherwise breaking down so-called “Town/Gown” distinctions.
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2. Structure: University education should be seen as a social good, rather than a luxury commodity. This involves resisting proposed ‘reforms’ which will further marketise the sector by encouraging competition amongst universities and increasing the number of new private providers, and allowing universities ranked higher by student (customer) feedback to increase tuition fees in the long-run. It also involves combatting existing forms of marketisation and commodification in Cambridge education: for example, the excessive work burdens, inadequate pay and job insecurity of many teaching staff, or the focus on producing students who are competitive, efficient, skilled and possess the right kinds of smooth jargon to rise in the professional world, as opposed to those who can critically engage with knowledge, and build towards a more just world. Particularly with regard to its scientific departments, the University should critically engage with who its education is meant for - the goal should always be public good, not private profit. An emancipatory education must also be structured to break down the division in theory and action that so isolates the academy from concrete struggles against oppression.
Aside from content, the structure of the academic programme must be changed so that the overwhelming burden of study does not discourage meaningful engagements with political organising. The University must also begin to give greater respect and compensation for the other kinds of ‘non-academic’ labour that hold up the academy: it must not hire staff on zero-hour contracts, and must provide at least the living wage to all employees; it must provide sufficient facilities to staff or students who are responsible for childcare; the structure of the academic programme, and individuals within it, must allow for the time and energy people put into care for others or themselves. Finally, the University’s policies must challenge, rather than reproduce, systems that direct violence at particular groups. Among other things, the University must change the disproportionate hiring of white men, particularly to high-rank positions (and instead actively hire those from excluded groups whose work investigates systems of domination), must reconsider its investments (for example, in the fossil fuel industry and arms trade), must resist the implementation of programmes like Prevent, which criminalise racialised groups, and respond properly to allegations of sexual violence.
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3. Content: The University must work to change rather than uphold the historic destruction and devaluation of certain kinds of knowledge, forms of learning and experiences within Western academia. This involves changing the curriculum to include post/decolonial, anti-racist, indigenous, feminist and queer, disability-centred and other kinds of radical, ‘non-canonical’ theory. In the fields considered more ‘objective’, it involves examining and revealing the ways in which power might constitute what seems to be unavoidable common sense, or directs what is included, and how these disciplines are also embedded in society and politics. Teachers must encourage rather than dismissing students’ attempts to highlight histories and contexts (of violence) that are erased in mainstream discourse. Styles of teaching and learning must also be changed – more spaces for collective, interactive learning must be set up, and teachers should begin by attempting to gauge what kinds of previously acquired knowledge each student is bringing in, and then work with those. Styles of speaking and writing that aren’t typical of the white male-dominated academy must not be devalued, but engaged with respectfully. Teachers must take into account the particular needs of those with disabilities. Finally, as mentioned above, the University must start breaking down the division between theory and practice, partly by producing and teaching the kind of theory that focuses on and encourages concrete action towards justice.
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