Education
Higher education
From neoliberal business and economics schools and research focused on extractive technologies, to the fixation on competitiveness and corporate success, mainstream higher education largely propagates the harmful socioeconomic status quo. Let's instead envision a world of affordable educational institutions that teach practical skills and critical knowledge for a more sustainable world, grounded in an ethics of care and compassion for all of life. Fortunately, from both within and outside of mainstream universities, many programs are already critiquing the dominant system and contributing to the collective search for socially and ecologically sane alternatives. Use these Actions as a starting point to create the higher education of your dreams.
Higher education Actions
Find an alternative (to) university.
Find an alternative (to) university.
Mainstream universities do not have a monopoly on "higher learning". There are many alternative universities and colleges and non-university higher learning initiatives rooted in ecological and social regeneration. Those we include here are far from comprehensive, but all share the quality of being actively engaged in the collective study and search for more sustainable, humane, grounded models and modes of knowledge formation, philosophy and values, livelihood creation, and engagement with the world in general. Please get in touch with us if you know of and wish to recommend others for inclusion.
Take action
- Connect with the Ecoversities Alliance, a trans-local community of over 200 transformative learning spaces from around the world "committed to radically re-imagining higher education to cultivate human and ecological flourishing. Ecoversities seek to transform the unsustainable and unjust economic, political and social systems/mindsets that dominate the planet."
- Take a short course through Sterling College's EcoGather, a platform and network of over 300 modules of digital courses that cover subjects such as Wellbeing Economy, Climate + Change, Ecology, Agroecology, and Relational Food Systems, aimed at "radically imagining and collectively living into post-capitalist realities, pursuing purposeful, connected land-based alivelihoods, returning to kinship as part of the natural world, and finding pleasure and abundance while living within limits."
- Join Schumacher Wild (UK) the successor to the pioneer of transdisciplinary holistic ecological higher education Schumacher College, offering a foundation course as well as short courses rooted in the (re)creation of convivial, affectionate, regenerative relationships between people and planet.
- Become a 'khoji,' or seeker, with Swaraj University (India), based on self-designed learning programs that include "self-awareness, action-research and experiments, community living, apprenticeships, learning journeys, unlearning challenges and social entrepreneurship projects."
- Co-create ecologically and socially sane learning, teaching and living on Earth through Bhoomi College's (India) fellowships and short courses.
- Explore the short courses, vocational educational opportunities or a BA in Sustainable Futures at Black Mountains College (Wales), education that empowers people to build resilience in the face of the climate and ecological crisis. Their approach is built on rethinking traditional learning to foster the skills, creativity, and systems thinking needed to build a fair and just society within safe planetary boundaries.
- Join a travel learning course with Enlivened Cooperative, a worker-owned, not-for-profit, eco-social learning organization "reimagining learning in support of people, grassroots communities and organizations" based on principles of cooperativism, biomimicry, inter-cultural learning and well-being.
Get inspired
- Teenagers and young adults with tragic pasts find a place to blossom as social entrepreneurs at SINA Loketa, an alternative learning campus in one of the world's largest refugee camps in Uganda. Sina Loketa is part of the Social Innovation Academy, a global movement of guided, self-directed entrepreneurship programs for marginalized youth.
- In The Journey to Alivelihoods, Manish Jain and Kalashree Sengupta write about how Swaraj University and the Ecoversities Alliance have been fostering Alivelihoods - "careers that replenish and restore our sacred covenant with the rest of nature", and represent "a conscious movement towards caring for the greater good and a regenerative culture."
- In Educating for the World We Need, Thais Mantovani asks, "What might education look like if it were rooted in care, connection, and the rhythms of life?", and shares numerous living examples gleaned from participants of an interactive webinar that are answering this question.
Find an alternative program within a mainstream university.
Find an alternative program within a mainstream university.
There are many degree and certificate programs within mainstream universities and colleges that offer critical perspectives of, and alternatives to, the dominant political-economic system. Those included here are far from comprehensive, representing programs known to the makers of this action guide. Please get in touch with us if you know of and wish to recommend others for inclusion.
Take action
- Explore graduate programs seeking critical alternatives to the dominant system with an orientation towards global environmental justice.
- Join a program of critical development studies, that calls into question the dominant assumptions about development, globalization, technology, etc. A selective set of examples include: Global Political Economy and Development at the University of Kassel (Germany); Development Studies at the International Institute of Social Studies/Erasmus University (The Netherlands); Human Ecology - Culture, Power and Sustainability at Lund University (Sweden); Environment, Culture and Society at Lancaster University (UK); Environment, Politics and Development at Kings College London (UK); Gund Institute-Leadership for the Ecozoic PhD at the University of Vermont (US); and Maestría de Investigación en Ecología Política y Alternativas al Desarrollo (Masters in Political Ecology and Alternatives to Development), Universidad Andina Simón Bolívar (Ecuador).
- Study and become part of the emerging paradigm and movement of agroecology, challenging the corporate industrialized global food system and promoting food sovereignty and ecological production, through graduate programs like Agroecology, Water and Food Sovereignty at Coventry University (UK), the Institute of Agroecology at the University of Vermont (US), or the Master in Agroecology and Food Sovereignty at the University of Gastronomic Sciences of Pollenzo (Italy).
- There are many more programs out there. A few search terms to find them include: political ecology, environmental studies, environmental sociology, ecological education, ecological economics, outdoor education leadership, geography, and anthropology.
- Browse a large list of universities in the US, and a few elsewhere, that offer innovative programs: the Colleges & Universities directory from the Alternative Education Resource Organization.
- For graduate study, locate a professor whose work resonates with your passions and values, through portals like academia.edu, ResearchGate, or departmental websites. Email them and ask if they are accepting new students, and if they are open to a conversation. Even mainstream universities often employ professors who are passionate about alternatives.
- Attend conferences on alternatives to connect with like-minded professors, and inquire about their departments and programs.
- Study abroad to gain perspectives and experience in other cultures. School for International Training Study Abroad, for example, operates programs around the world on topics such as "Movements, Power and Resistance," "Indigenous Peoples and Globalization," and "Sustainability and Environmental Justice."
Get inspired
- Explore the stories of students in EARTH University in Costa Rica to learn how agriculture students have pursued sustainable livelihoods after college. The story of Juana Nohelia Bonilla, an older alum who created agricultural cooperatives in her home country of Honduras, is particularly inspiring.
- The Right Livelihood College, an initiative connecting grassroots changemakers and academia, has college campus centers at universities in Thailand, Germany, Argentina, India, Nigeria, the USA, Sweden, Chile, and Switzerland.
Challenge mainstream economics education.
Challenge mainstream economics education.
Conventional economics education and training reinforce neoclassical and neoliberal views, assumptions, values and practices–for example, people as fundamentally greedy, the need for perpetual growth and global trade, ‘bigger is better’, and so on–that are perpetuating and exacerbating today’s socio-ecological crises. Societies urgently need radically different economic/s education that is centered on sustainable wellbeing for people and planet. The courses and resources listed here provide that education.
Take action
- Challenge the 'growthism' of mainstream economics by studying the emerging paradigm and movement of degrowth in the Degrowth Online Masters program from the Autonomous University of Barcelona.
- Learn about the roots of capitalism, and solidaristic and liberatory alternatives through Economics for Liberation, a seven-module online course.
- Reintegrate economics with life through the Capital Institute's Fundamentals of Regenerative Economics, a 6-8 hour self-paced learning journey.
- Join Rethinking Economics International in upending status quo neoclassical economics education through their 10-week online course Rethinking Economics 101. Start or join a Rethinking Economics local group, and help reform the economics discipline with the Wednesday Econ Club.
- Enroll in the Wellbeing Economy course by EcoGather at Sterling College, Vermont (US), in partnership with the Gross National Happiness Centre in Bhutan. The course covers strategies for cultivating inner wellbeing; introductions to conventional economics and capitalism; reflections on work and purpose; and investigations into currency systems, degrowth, and gift economies, among other subjects.
- Participate in Synergia Institute's free massive online open course: Toward Co-operative Commonwealth: Transition in a Perilous Century, which blends theory and critical analysis with practical models of transition currently being applied in countless communities around the globe towards system change and transition to a political economy that is both socially just and environmentally sustainable.
- Explore and put into practice concrete alternatives for an ecological and socially just economy with these educational materials from Konzeptwerk Neue Ökonomie.
- Make use of the Degrowth Discussion and Organizing Toolkit from the Degrowth Institute (US), designed from lessons learned from community and campus groups across the U.S. and beyond to help get you started facilitating and organizing conversations about degrowth.
- Check out the Curriculum for a New Economics - "Practical tools for local economic transformation" - as well as the Study Guide to Small is Beautiful from the Schumacher Center for a New Economics.
- Enroll in graduate studies in the Economics of Sustainability, focusing on Modern Monetary Theory and Ecological Economics, from the Modern Money Lab and Torrens University (Australia).
- Find extensive teaching materials for educators and students with Doughnut Economics for University Courses, oriented around the Doughnut Economics framework of meeting the needs of all people within the means of the living planet.
Get inspired
- In the last decade, activists and student groups with Rethinking Economics International have trained over 500 student leaders and achieved 63 campaign wins in 15 countries, from complete overhaul of economics curricula, to new elective modules and core courses that challenge neoclassical economics and introduce critical new approaches like ecological economics, benefiting tens of thousands of economics students around the world. Read more about Rethinking Ecnomics' impacts.
- In What can you do with a degree in degrowth?, authors Claire Thompson and Cass Hebron share how graduates of the degrowth masters program at the Autonomous University of Barcelona have gone on to work in--and bring a degrowth analysis and perspective to--activism, teaching, non-profits and government, among others.
Find a fellowship to pursue your passion.
Find a fellowship to pursue your passion.
Funding your localization ideas is possible through thousands of fellowships for formal study, skills training, travel, cultural exchange, and entrepreneurial pursuits. Because resilient local economies address so many sectors--such as the climate crisis, health, human rights, income inequality, and entrepreneurship--proposals to contribute to the localization movement are relevant to a wide variety of fellowships and funded research opportunities. Connect with financial support, expand your networks, and put your ideas out there with the resources below.
Take action
- Believe that your ideas and plans are worthy of resources. Although this may sound trite, this shift in mindset is the first step to funding your dreams.
- Sign up for a free account at ProFellow.org to find 2500+ funded opportunities for study and research, around the world, at all levels of experience. No need to be a student or affiliated with academia. The database contains fellowships for citizens of all countries.
- Join the Teach for Nature Fellowship from Bhoomi College (India), which helps to" train individuals as Nature educators, empowering them to work with children in schools and nurture this vital connection."
- Ask prospective university departments and professors directly about fellowships and funding opportunities. Many universities offer graduate assistantships with a tuition waiver, even for non-research programs; these are not always advertised. Some universities in Europe and South Asia offer free and/or very low-cost tuition, even for people from other countries.
- Build relationships with local government officials and inquire about funding opportunities for projects that will benefit your local community.
- Browse Local Futures' Action Tools and Blog for ideas on how to articulate the linkages between localization and the "single-issue causes" that fellowships often center on.
Get inspired
- The Pulitzer Rainforest Investigations Network Fellowship supports journalists from tropical rainforests worldwide with funding and mentorship to report on industrial-scale deforestation.
- The Inter-American Foundation Research Fellowship Program offers a stipend for individually-led research addressing resilient local community development.
- The Udaipur Localization Fellowship, offered by Shikshantar in Udaipur, India, offers social and financial support for dream projects to improve health, culture, and/or the environment in Udaipur.
Voices from the field
- In the episode Localization: learning from indigenous communities from the Planet Local Voices podcast by Local Futures, Thais Mantovani calls out modern schooling as a tool of indoctrination, and highlights the importance of reweaving trust-based community relationships – not only for survival, but also for health and happiness.
- In the short video series Decolonising Universities, speakers at the 2011 International Conference on Decolonising Our Universities, held in Penang, Malaysia, by TV Multiversity, education pioneers and activists from around the world share perspectives on the colonial and Eurocentric legacies present in university systems around the world, and on how to build alternatives.
Resources
- The book Transformative Learning: Reflections on 30 Years of Head, Heart, and Hands at Schumacher College, by Satish Kumar and Pavel Cenkl, is a moving retrospective on the transformative impact of one of the world's most well-known and loved experiments in holistic higher education.
- The open-source periodical issue Education for Social Transformation: Alternatives for a Just Future, by NORRAG, explores how education "can be transformed to address the pressing social, economic, political, and ecological crisis and challenges of our time." The issue covers anti-racist and anti-patriarchal education, climate/environmental and decolonial education, cosmopolitical learning, critical multicultural education and critical pedagogy, democratic schools, holistic education, Indigenous education and knowledge, peace education, and education for social justice.
- The article Educating for the World We Need, by Thais Mantovani of EcoUniversidade in Brazil, argues that most of what we call “education” today prepares us for a world we no longer want. In response to her question "What might education look like if it were rooted in care, connection, and the rhythms of life?" she shares numerous living examples gleaned from participants of an interactive webinar.