Reclaiming the University for the Public Good by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9783030216252
Publisher: Springer International Publishing

© The Author(s) 2019

M. Noble, C. Ross (eds.)Reclaiming the University for the Public GoodPalgrave Critical University Studieshttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-21625-2_7

7. Phoenix from the Ashes: The Origins and Development of Leicester Vaughan College

Lucy Faire1 and Miriam Gill1

(1)Leicester Vaughan College, Leicester, UK

Lucy Faire (Corresponding author)

Email: [email protected]

Miriam Gill

Email: [email protected]

Introduction

Leicester Vaughan College is a Community Benefit Society (CBS) co-operative which is working towards becoming a Higher Education (HE) institution. The College (hereafter LVC) is a re-establishment of a 150-year-old adult education college, closed in 2013. The opening sentence of LVC’s objects states: ‘we believe in education as a public good.’1 This expresses the conviction of the College’s founders that it will rise like a ‘phoenix’ and once again provide part-time, adult Higher Education in Leicester and its region.2 Like a phoenix, both recognisably the same and renewed in form and strength, it hopes to continue to enable self-improvement, mutual-improvement and civic participation for those unable to study for full-time degrees.

This chapter explains the background, development and future plans of LVC. The first section traces the origins of LVC through the history of Leicester’s Vaughan College (1862–2013), the Vaughan Centre for Lifelong Learning (hereafter VCLL ) and the Save Vaughan Campaign of summer 2016. The second examines how the problems faced by students and tutors in VCLL and its eventual fate exemplify the consequences of governmental funding changes and neoliberal culture on university adult education provision and their disproportionately toxic impact on this specialist sector. The third section recounts the establishment of LVC describing the choices made in its creation, the anticipated advantages of the co-operative model and its current state. As a pioneering project, this new form of Higher Education institution (HEI) aims to offer a replicable, scalable and adaptable alternative to the prevailing neoliberal model with its catastrophic impact on university-level adult education provision.

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