The legacy of Professor Mike Neary (1956–2023) and the Social Science Centre in Lincoln lives through a radical vision for education: Student as Producer. This model offers a profound rethinking of the purpose and potential of higher education. Born out of the Reinvention Centre for Undergraduate Research—a collaboration between the University of Warwick and Oxford Brookes—the project began as a Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning in 2005. Its ambition was not simply to improve teaching, but to reinvent the entire model of higher education.
Instead of viewing students as passive recipients or consumers of knowledge, it frames them as active collaborators in its creation. This model re-establishes the relationship between research and teaching, insisting that universities are not marketplaces but sites of cooperation, where students and academics together try to acquire new knowledge.
This concept finds its philosophical roots in Critical Pedagogy. Thinkers like Paulo Freire, Peter McLaren, Henry Giroux, and Glenn Rikowski provide the framework, connecting Students as Producer to a broader tradition of democratic education. Its constitution is more directly informed by Walter Benjamin’s “Author as Producer,” which argues that intellectuals must be engaged in reshaping social relations. In this view, the lecture is not a static product but part of an ongoing, participatory process of transformation.
A key influence is the idea of the commons, not merely as shared resources, but as socially-produced spaces of innovation and creativity. In this context, the “common” it is a practice, a way of organising relationships that resists market logic. Student as Producer aligns with this movement by advocating for the freedom of academics and students as workers, rather than focusing on the commodification of academic factors.
The model Student as Producer goes against the paradigm that now dominates global higher education systems. Governments, particularly in the UK, have pushed a market-driven version of education at least since the 2008 financial crisis. Rising fees, growing corporate influence, and performance-based managerialism have eroded the public, democratic mission of the university.
In this neoliberal context, the student becomes “money”—a source of revenue, rather than a human being engaged in inquiry. Lecturers, in turn, are de-professionalised and reduced to operational agents delivering standardised outcomes. This shift undermines creativity and critical thinking, all essential components of democratic life.
Drawing on the sociocultural theory of Lev Vygotsky, it reclaims the idea that learning is inherently creative and collective. Vygotsky’s concept of the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) holds that education should be open-ended, allowing learners to exceed their perceived limits. Learning outcomes, by contrast, confine students within predetermined expectations, stifling growth. Research-engaged teaching, by encouraging students to question, investigate, and create, aligns with ZPD and supports transformative learning.
An example of ‘student as producer’ is Mike Neary’s 2017 collaboration with undergraduate Matt Mosey on the project “Studentification: the impact on residents in an English City,” which was published in the student journal Geoverse. This work exemplifies the potential of student-led research to contribute meaningfully to academic discourse and public knowledge.
This paper endorses the model of a student as a producer. The crises we face—ecological collapse, authoritarian resurgence, economic inequality—demand a more just and democratic production of knowledge. Yet the STEM-focused, positivist science often championed in policy circles remains bound to capitalist logic, unable to offer real solutions. Student as Producer and related initiatives like the “University of the Earth” propose a different path: a radical, civic university committed to social transformation.
Importantly, Student as Producer seeks to democratise science and knowledge creation at the societal level. Rather than asking “How is this knowledge useful to me?”, it urges us to ask: “What can we do with the knowledge we’ve created together?” This collective orientation challenges the instrumentalism of the neoliberal university.
However, implementing this vision is a very difficult task. Students may be disengaged, and conditioned to expect transactional learning. Institutions may actively discourage deep intellectual engagement, prioritising market metrics over meaningful knowledge. So, there are reasons to be pessimistic. A way forward is always possible, there are international examples worthy of mention, from the above-mentioned attempts of constituting a civic University to the California Institute of Integral Studies (USA) – resistance is always possible. The paper concludes that – given a situation of isolation of the academic as a critical thinker in the neo-liberal university – we should be aware of the ascribed role of the teacher as ‘facilitator’: it is impossible to transcend it at will. A few concluding suggestions were made: ‘selecting’ the students who display an interest in the content of the lecture and nurture them; resorting again to a double agenda, whereby the ’employability’ content appears on the surface, but the critical approach is advanced underneath that surface.
– Stefano Ba’
Senior Lecturer, Leeds Trinity University, UK