Experimental College of the Twin Cities

The Experimental College of the Twin Cities (EXCOtc) is an experimental college in the Minneapolis-Saint Paul area that provides peer-based and free education to the wider community. It was started by Macalester students in the Spring of 2006 in response to a policy change that reflected the shrinking access to higher education nationally and the neo-liberal model in the US and around the world. EXCOtc is currently expanding to other college campuses and community groups, both of which can create their own EXCO chapters. A second chapter was created at the University of Minnesota (Twin Cities Campus) in the winter of 2007, as a continuation of protests in support of a strike by the workers of the campus's AFSCME union who demanded a living wage. Protesting students believed that their school's administration had abandoned the principles of the public land-grant institution: equal access, social justice, democratic education. So, they decided to devote their energies to form a new chapter of EXCOtc, as a university that would enact those ideals.

EXCOtc exemplifies a community-based emphasis, with organizing groups at Macalester College, the University of Minnesota, and Minneapolis Community and Technical College, including students, staff and community members, and with an expansive commitment to movement building, community, and education for social change. Class titles range from Latino Labor Organizing for Alternatives to Globalization, to Jazz and Competition Dance, to Anarchist Anthropology, to the Social Responsibility of African American Music, to Bike Feminism (Theory and Mechanics), to Shape Note Singing, to Exploratory Movement, to Universal Verbal Language: Tracks of the Infinite on the Human Race.

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