Throughout the late 1950s and 1960s, dozens of experimental colleges were founded across the United States. While these institutions are usually remembered as either a fringe movement of the 1960s or a niche for nonconformist students, this essay argues that their genesis was markedly mainstream. Drawing from popular trends, higher education…

Rabindranath Tagore (1861--1941) is primarily known worldwide as the first Asian poet to receive the Nobel Prize in literature, in 1913. He lived and died in colonial India as a British subject. However, any engagement with studies of Tagore would reveal that, despite his outstanding achievements in creative writing and music, he deserves to be…

This article approaches the question of how far critical pedagogy can be institutionalised through a series of historical and contemporary examples. Current debates concerned with the co-operative university are examined, as well as histories of independent working-class education and the free university movement. Throughout this history, critical…

In a seven-year study of new experimental colleges, Grant and Riesman (1978) report that within those schools "The utopian impulses are strong, representing a search for a more perfect union." One of the most radical of those experiments was Minnesota Metropolitan State College (MMSC). In addition to having no campus, the school had no…

The need for increased creativity in education is currently being proposed in much innovative thinking on higher education as universities are forced to recreate themselves. There are four conditions facing higher education worldwide: alignment, motivation, connection, and direction. Higher education is characterized by a hierarchy of subjects and…

Authors reviewed Raymond and Charlotte Koch's consideration of Commonwealth College. (Editor/RK)

A former student of Alexander Meiklejohn, a member of the Experimental College movement on the 1930s, describes his impressions of Meiklejohn's life, leadership qualities, and personal characteristics. (MSE)

Livingston College was established to provide a terminal social science program, particularly for lower-income minority students, though the majority of its students are Jewish and middle class. Despite efforts to make Livingston a model college, however, external social, racial, and economic variables cannot be controlled. (Author/GC)

This book explores the history and evolution of six innovative colleges, examining how these institutions have adapted and transformed themselves in today's social, political, and economic environments. The book contends that these institutions, which emerged in the 1960s and 1970s, can serve as models today. Case study chapters describe the…

This history of Goddard College (Vermont) and its founder and first president, Royce S. Pitkin, discusses the founding, growth and success of the college. The hypothesis for this experimental college was that the education necessary to a civilized society is a process of dealing with the growth and realization of potential in the context of the…

Author evaluates Martin Duberman's account of Black Mountain College, an experiment in education. (Author/RK)

Goldsmiths College, founded in 1891 by a company for higher education and recreation for the "men and women of the industrial, working and artisan classes," has been denied full school status although owned by the University of London. Recent debate about the college's future has focused on maintenance of standards and its tradition of…

The progressive tradition expressed in the 1931 Rollins College conference on progressivism in higher education lives on and has been renewed in the most successful experimental colleges of today, and its models of faculty-student relations have been adapted in many places. (MSE)

In the early twentieth century, Alexander Meiklejohn believed the undergraduate college must teach students how to think. He aspired to make students into thinking, caring, active citizens with the intellectual skills to participate in a democratic society. In 1927, with the founding of the Experimental College at the University of Wisconsin, he…

"The Experimental College" tells the story of a 4-year academic experiment at the University of Wisconsin established by Alexander Meiklejohn. Aimed at finding a method of teaching that would help students develop "intelligence in the conduct of their own lives," the Experimental College discarded major requirements,…