The University of Students: A place for joint self-education

Abstract

In this article, we explain, explore, and problematize the formation, organization, leadership, and daily educational life of the first (to our knowledge) international democratic university of students (UniS) in the 21st century. UniS is run by the students, for the students, and with the students for their diverse purposes, desires, interests, and needs. A student is anyone who freely chooses to study something for whatever reason. Everyone can become a student at any time without any high school credits, fees, bureaucracy, tests, or any other form of human suffering. But what exactly is UniS? Why students? What if…? How can one visualize UniS, which is “so vague, so bizarre, so unnecessary to me!” What are its philosophical principles? Who are we? What does the University of Students look like? In the spirit of curiosity, wonder, leisure, fun, freedom, and love for learning, we invite the reader to attend and connect with two working edu-clubs of UniS: a movie club “Schooling Around the World and Time” and an “Educationalist Club.” In addition, we discuss some of the main issues, limitations, and challenges, including the civilization of the necessities, colonization of the human spirit by the economy, a lack of genuine leisure, and toxification of the human by foisted education. The open-ended, poetic conclusion lets the readers form their own interpretations, ideas, questions, and answers about UniS. What is the future of UniS? And only time will tell, 10, 100 years later or 100 light-years from now.

Keywords

• University of Students
• international
• democratic student-led university
• democratic higher education
• joint self-education
• self-realization