Just heard that the CEO of #Vermont Electric #Coop (one of the most progressive electric #coops in the country) is running for #vt governor! If she wins the primary in August, she'd be the first #trans woman to be a major party nominee for governor of a US state, and would definitely be a huge co-op advocate. 🤞
https://www.sevendaysvt.com/OffMessage/archives/2018/01/30/walters-hallquist-readies-democratic-run-for-governor-of-vermont #vt #vtpoli
Thinking about social institutions that do and don't support coops, universities are missing.
At the moment we are obsessively developing entrepreneurship as a curriculum focus, and chanting "start ups, start ups, start ups", despite all that we know about what's broken in this model.
What if universities gave equal attention to how and why to form coops? What if that was a thing students learned?
@katebowles @mattcropp Off the top of my head I can think of http://www.campus.coop/
@nev @mattcropp that's really useful, thanks!
What I'm thinking about in connection to this is the curriculum, where we're shifting from "how to get a job" to "how to start a start up". We're educating for precarity, not solidarity or social sustainability.
I'd love to know about examples of "how to start a coop" in mainstream curriculum. Do you know of anything like this?
(I do know about coop unis in the uk but I'm thinking about public higher ed.)
@katebowles @nev The two institutions that are doing the most, in North America at least, are the University of Saskatchewan and St. Mary's in Nova Scotia.
The former has a center for #CoopStudies (with a great youtube channel) and the latter has a (distance) alt-MBA called a "Masters of Management, Co-operatives and Credit Unions", which I've been definitely been tempted to apply for: http://www.smu.ca/academics/sobey/sobey-cooperative-management-education.html
@nev @katebowles Most of the "how to start a co-op" education tends to take place outside of academia, via NGOs like the #FoodCoop Initiative: https://www.fci.coop/ or NASCO: https://www.nasco.coop/development/services
Starting a de novo #coop (vs. the conversion of an existing business) is avery different process from what is hegemonically understood as #entrepreneurship.