Today, almost all Korean Universities have been badly shaken by the tempest of structural reconstruction directed from the government. This is due to a crisis of overproduction that has accumulated over the past 20 years. Structural crisis is not necessarily bad because a crisis can also be an opportunity. While alternative solutions to the crisis may be difficult or near impossible to implement, they are unavoidable when cracks have already appeared in the stable structure. A fundamental alternative may be found in restructuring the whole framework of ‘a competitive society - school career society - Competitive education’ has been the basic cause of the crisis. It will be a necessary long educational revolution for such restructuring to occur. This paper presents a realistic alternative that can be practiced immediately through the collaboration of individuals. This is an educational experiment to form an alternative university established under a new paradigm of collaborative education for solving problems related to the simultaneous development of individuals and society in contrast to the current competitive education paradigm. It involves a new educational method of knowledge-circulation cooperation in collaboration with diverse knowledge producers (inside and outside the university) and various consumers who desire new knowledge and experiences.
It is proposed to call this alternative educational paradigm, ‘knowledge circulation cooperation’ because its purpose is to focus on networking and the widespread dissemination of knowledge that involves multiple interaction between teachers and students.
In this context, ‘knowledge circulation cooperation’ would be a type of ‘nomamegi(communism) of knowledge’ because circulation implies the smooth flow of interconnected facets of separated knowledge and its interactive sharing. Not only Nonamegi of food-clothing-shelter but also Nonamegi of knowledge is surely necessary for a fruitful life! The contradiction between socialization of knowledge production and privatization of knowledge property rights, together with the contradiction between socialization of production power and privatization of production means, are important historical tasks to be solved in the 21th century. For these reasons, this paper proposes the formation of a new alternative university to be called the ‘Knowledge Circulation Cooperation Nonamegi Open University’.