Report on a fi eld visit to Mondragón University : a cooperative experience / experiment SUSAN WRIGHT

We have been investigating universities in our own countries for many years and are now turning our attention to exploring alternatives to current reforms. As part of these investigations, we spent two days of interviews and meetings at Mondragón,1 a town in Gipúzkoa in the Spanish Basque Country. Mondragón is at the centre of one of the largest groups of co-operatives in the world and in 1997 set up what is probably the only co-operative university in existence. This highly successful university has a solidary economy, effective methods of knowledge generation and transfer, and is expanding. Among its unique features are fl at hierarchies and forms of self-management, community engagement and student participation built on an overall concept of the solidarity of the stakeholders. Davydd Greenwood spent many years in the 1980s doing action research with people from the co-operatives, exploring organisational cultures and their effects on people-management strategies. Some of his contacts were extremely generous in making time to meet us and arrange interviews with others who could tell us about the co-operative university from different perspectives. Over two days, we were given a tour of the headquarters of the umbrella organisation for the co-operatives, called MONDRAGON, and met the former personnel director of one of the major co-operative companies to introduce us to the history and concepts of the movement. The rector and vice rector of Mondragón University made a whole morning available to present information and answer our questions with great generosity and openness. We then met a dean of one of the faculties, two lecturers from another faculty, and a lecturer from the third faculty who was also a member of the Social Council.