Mission Statement
The Experimental College (EXCO) is an autonomous university that both envisions and enacts a “public” university by offering unique courses that are free and open to anyone.
EXCO seeks to embody the vision of a democratic university that serves the common good.
EXCO is committed to inclusion, community involvement, and progressive social change.
EXCO offers both a model of what the U might be, and a tool to make it so: EXCO is both an alternative university outside the U of M, and a subversive university that seeks to change the U of M from within.
EXCO is designed to both examine and overturn the alienation and exclusion created by the political hierarchy, bureaucracy, and neoliberalization of the university, by
CONNECTING:
--theory with praxis
--scholarship with activism
--campus with community
--workers, students, and faculty with each other
--the university communities with communities at large
And
CREATING:
A space where people come together to:
--share their talents in an inclusive, open, non-hierarchical, non-coercive setting
--become authentically involved in their education
--question, live, and transform their education
--build networks between and among groups
--build solidarity on campus to grow a public university
--organize for social change
EXCO COURSES:
--provide a large imaginative net to welcome any kind of content and form
--respond to community, campus, and public needs
--offer truly public access, involving university and non-university members not just as participants, but also facilitators and collaborators
--employ a variety of educational and pedagogical tools
--meet regularly as decided by those organizing them
--channel the U’s resources (classrooms and monies); use existing infrastructure
EXCO COURSES MAY:
--collaborate with other grassroots groups on campus
--carry out original research committed to social change
--arise from problems and material realities right here at the U, the community, or the world
--culminate in direct social action in response to problems and realities
--be taken for credit as part of Independent Study