Our Education! Is College Worth the Cost?

A Film Screening and Symposium on the future of education.
Featuring an exhibit of Protest Art from the Free Cooper Union campaign.

FREE; Please RSVP Here

Please join us Thursday, November 13th for a screening of the documentary Ivory Tower, followed by a panel discussion about the rise of the education-industrial complex, new community driven education initiatives, and the fight to defend a free Cooper Union.

With student debt in America topping 1.2 trillion dollars, institutions of higher learning have become big business while a generation of young people has mortgaged their future to work as intellectual sharecroppers in the new information economy. In this context, the fight to sustain Cooper Union’s 150 year mission: education “open and free to all�? is both microcosm and bellwether for the national debate about the state of higher education.

A new movement is at hand: students and educators are organizing in powerful ways to create innovative, open and cooperative pedagogical models that re-define the “institution�? of education. Come hear from people active in the Cooper Union lawsuit and alternative education projects around the city as they discuss what the future has in store.

Schedule:

7:00 PM Film Screening

8:30 PM Panel discussion moderated by artist/educator Benjamin Degen with Ivory Tower Director, Andrew Rossi, Free Cooper Union student organizer, Victoria Sobel, faculty liaison for BHQFU, Jarrett Earnest, founding Director of the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research, Ajay Chaudhary, and Catherine Despont who develops educational programming at Pioneer Works. Plus special guests!

9:30 PM Reception