This article examines the transformative educational practices and democratic ethos of Black Mountain College, an experimental institution ahead of its time. Drawing on insights from scholars like Rhea Estelle Lathan and Susan Kates, Muir positions Black Mountain as a site of community literacies, by prioritizing democratic engagement, diversity,…

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…

This report describes my field visits to Berea and Deep Springs Colleges in the U.S.A. and explores their forms of ownership/control, governance, financing and organisational structure. Berea and Deep Springs are small, liberal arts colleges, distinctive in American higher education, in which students actively participate in a spirit of democracy.…

This article features a conversation on the occasion of a May 2018 "Festschrift" in "Issues in Interdisciplinary Studies" to honor the work of William Newell, between Newell and P. Sven Arvidson. William Newell is Emeritus Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies at Miami University, where he taught interdisciplinary courses full…

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…

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)

The University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma, an experimental college, has developed an innovative general education program. Teaching approaches and organizational structures of the program have been changed to accommodate the new curriculum. The general education core, called the Interdisciplinary Studies Sequence (IDS), includes courses in…

At Deep Springs College, in a remote California desert valley, 24 male students from the top 1 percent of the high school applicant pool spend 2 years running a ranch and studying a curriculum that leans toward literature and away from the sciences. (MSE)

The five essays of this book focus on educational reform in higher education and are based on several persistent themes: that there is a fatal conflict between the graduate school and the undergraduate college; that "liberal" education is in a fundamental sense "politics", therefore, an education needed by everyone for all in a…

A two-year college program on a high desert ranch that combines traditional liberal arts with strenuous physical work aims to develop humility, service, leadership, and a wide range of practical skills. Most graduates have gone on to graduate study and leadership positions in society. (MSE)

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)

Financially self-sustaining, the New Resources Program (NRP) of the College of New Rochelle in New York offers a nontraditional liberal arts curriculum with no majors and with campuses throughout New York city. (PG)

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,…

This paper discusses the influence of John Dewey and his educational philosophy and methods on the development of experimental liberal arts colleges during the 1930s. It reviews the student-centered, holistic, experiential curriculum advocated by Dewey and others, and the role of John Andrew Rice in founding Black Mountain College near Black…