Working Men's College and the Tradition of Adult Education

Tom Schuller chaired the Governing Board of the Working Men’s College from 2008 to 2018. He is a former Dean and Professor of Lifelong Learning at Birkbeck, University of London. His latest book is The Paula Principle: How and Why Women Lose Out At Work (2017).Richard Taylor is Emeritus Professorial Fellow at Wolfson College, Cambridge, and was Professor and Director of Continuing Education and Lifelong Learning at the Universities of Cambridge and, before that, Leeds. His most recent book is English Radicalism in the Twentieth Century: A Distinctive Politics? (2020).

• Introduction Part One 1. From FD Maurice and Christian Socialism to secular radicalism: continuities and differences 2. From benign neglect to narrow utilitarianism? Adult education policy since the Second World War and its impact on the College 3. The College building: embodying the ethos Part Two 4. The governance of the College: accountability, strategy and ethos. Appendix to chapter 4: Money matters. Personal memoirs 1. 5. The educational context: the changing programme and curriculum of the College. Personal memoirs 2 6. Learning communities 7. Interview with Satnam Gill: leading the College into the twenty-first century 8. Interrupting the ‘fellowship’: women, equal opportunities and change at the WMC Personal memoirs 3. 9. The Franklin family and the College, 1882 to 2017 and beyond. Personal memoirs 4. 10. Fellow institutions: the College in relation to other SDIs Personal memoirs 5 Part Three 11. The ‘College tradition’ and future challenges