Ross A. Laird

The Union Institute seminar was fun, and quite informative as well. I enjoy teaching most when the participants and I both have something to teach one another. But I was also saddened to learn that the Union Institute as it once was — the place where I earned my doctorate, where an integrative and interdisciplinary learning environment served a student body of very diverse and interesting people — will, within the next couple of years, be replaced by a more or less traditional distance education program.

The Union was once called “the Harvard of the lunatic fringe.” I liked that moniker very much. The atmosphere was unlike other institutions — intense, a bit scattered at times, but also very engaging and appealing for someone such as myself. I was able to achieve there what would have been impossible elsewhere, and what now will be impossible, at least for the time being, at any institution I am aware of in North America: a self-directed, learner-centered, rigorous and flexible interdisciplinary doctoral program.

I am confident that a new version of the Union system will develop elsewhere over the next few years. But I can’t shake the feeling, in this ever-growing corporatized environment of education as business, in this environment where education simply for the joy of learning (and not as career strategy) is a scarce commodity, where ever greater numbers of interdisciplinary students go hungry in their quest for truly nurturing learning communities — I can’t shake the feeling that we are in a dry spell, perhaps for some time to come, and that the Union’s radical departure from its original mission (for reasons having to do with economy and not with authentic learning) is the end of a long and illuminated road for which we have not yet found other paths.