Thirty Years After A Bad Idea

Rochdale.  It was exactly thirty years ago yesterday that the Metropolitan Toronto Police removed the last of the experimental college's residents from its Bloor Street high rise.  Rochdale College was an experiment in co-operative student run education.  It was the very epitome of progressive thinking in social and educational theories.  It was described as a "hippie heaven."  It was, of course, a complete and total disaster and by the time it closed in 1975 it was one of the largest "drug supermarkets" in North America and run by biker gangs.  Strange how these things turn out.  As an old man put it once, in a poem you may have read; "Stick to the Devil You Know."  From Wikipedia, excellent links included:

In the late sixties, universities were a centre of political idealism and experimentation. Rochdale College was established as an alternative to what were considered traditional paternalistic and non-democratic governing bodies within university education. Conversely, Rochdale's government policy was decided at open meetings in which all members of the co-operative could attend, participate in debate, and vote.

It was the largest of more than 300 tuition-free universities in North America, and offered no structured courses, curriculum, exams, degrees, or traditional teaching faculty. It became a hot bed of free thought and radical idealism, in many ways resembling a tribal community.

Traditional professors were replaced by “Resource People” of various academic and non-academic backgrounds, who would lead informal discussion groups on a wide variety of subjects, as opposed to structured classes.

It was typical of the free universities not to award degrees and the University of Toronto did not offer degrees through Rochdale College, but anyone could purchase a B.A. by donating $25 to the college and answering a simple skill-testing question. An M.A. was $50, and the applicant could pick the question. A Ph.D. did not require any skill-testing question, and sold for $100.

The Rochdale application also described its "non-degree": "We are also offering Non-Degrees at comparable rates. A Non-Ph.D. is $25.00. Course duration is your choice; requirements are simple, we ask that you say something. A Non-M.A. is $50.00 for which we require you to say something logical. A Non-B.A. is $100.00; you will be required to say something useful."