Post #1778367

2026-04-29 14:30 UTC

TIL that the original, as in first and oldest, western university, namely Bologna, was student-run. According to Wikipedia, students “hired and paid for the teachers [and] ran everything—a fact that often put teachers under great pressure and disadvantage". Not sure about the right balance between students and faculty running the show, but completely student-run would certainly beat today’s ⋅administrator-run⋅ shit show, so let's just go back to the roots and take it from there?

Replies (3)

@sidereal@kolektiva.social 2026-04-29 14:37

@bifouba@kolektiva.social even today, they’re at about a 1:1 ratio of profs to admin staff. Which is where most American universities were at the beginning of the sixties. Since then, at most American schools, it’s ballooned to more like 3:1 and then 5:1 in favor of the admin.

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@dogfox@kpop.social 2026-04-29 14:44

Worth a try! @bifouba@kolektiva.social

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@argonaut@mastodon.social 2026-04-29 16:35

@bifouba@kolektiva.social @hypebot@tldr.nettime.org the university started as a sort of “guild” to protect foreign students from state punishment due to soecific laws that applied mostly to them, then they hired scholars to teach them, and then the scholars took the reigns, and then they elected deans, and then those went and asked for money in the form of what later would become grants, and that’s how the downfall of western civilization started. (abridged to highlight cultural and moral impact)

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