From Deep Springs to the Microcollege Movement


Out this morning in the Los Angeles Review of Books! This essay with Tommaso Bardelli joins a growing conversation about the emergent microcollege movement, including the recent reflection by my friend Frank Eccher in The Point. With his Microcollege Podcast, Jacob Hundt (founder of Thoreau College) has done tremendous work to organize and articulate the microcollege movement. So too have microcollege organizers and founders at Gull Island Institute, Outer Coast, Tidelines Institute, and elsewhere. 

When I moved to Deep Springs sixteen years ago to begin my tenure as the Julian Steward Chair of Social Sciences, I intuited that living and working there would transform my life as well as my teaching and writing. But I could not have anticipated what would come of the Deep Springs Model. It's a thrill to contribute to this movement and to work alongside the visionary members -- founders, leaders, professors, and especially students -- comprising it.

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