By Kristie Kellahan

A Melbourne educator believes knowledge should be open to all at no cost, writes Kristie Kellahan.

The idea of a university that is free and open to anyone who wants to learn could be described as anti-establishment.

So it may come as a surprise that co-founder and co-convenor of Melbourne Free University (MFU) Dr Jasmine-Kim Westendorf happily works within the system when she’s not advocating for change.

When she’s not bringing together a host of speakers for MFU’s free classes, Westendorf is a lecturer in the Department of Politics, Philosophy and Legal Studies at La Trobe University, where she teaches in the international relations program. In 2010, Westendorf founded MFU with fellow PhD students Gerhard Hoffstaedter and Aurelien Mondon.

“We were frustrated with how outcome-oriented the formal university sector had become and we wanted the MFU to be a counterpoint,” she says. “Students can tend to see each subject as three pieces of assessment, rather than an opportunity for a broad exploration of ideas and knowledge.

“Academics are also put under increasing pressure to demonstrate vocationally relevant skills in their students, which is often at odds with liberal arts education.”

MFU is free and open to anyone to attend sessions. There are no enrolments, no fees, no

prerequisites, and no expectation that students attend a whole series: people are welcome to come to any and all sessions that pique their interest. With courses on poetry and sex, gender wars, the military, art history, crime fiction and more, MFU attracts a diverse crowd of learners.

Between 15 and 75 people attend sessions, while many more listen to the online podcasts.

“It’s a space for open engagement with ideas and knowledge for their own sake – you don’t get a degree, you don’t do assessments, there are no expectations other than that people come because they’re interested in the topic,” she says.

“We work on a ‘no money in, no money out’ basis. We don’t receive any funding and everything that is involved is given for free; the bars we use as venues allow us to use their space for free, speakers come for free, the MFU team works on a volunteer basis, the website is donated by a local web-hosting service, audience members help out with resources [like printing] when we need it, and so on.”

The format of MFU lectures emphasises group discussion, with each 45-minute presentation by an academic or professional expert followed by an open discussion with the audience.

“We’re not about knowledge transfer, it’s more about bringing something of the magic of knowledge back into public discourse and discussions, and bringing academics into spaces where they can speak to a much broader and more diverse audience than they usually would,” Westendorf says. “It’s about freeing knowledge from the institutional straitjackets,” she says. For more information see melbournefreeuniversity.org