# Schumacher College

Schumacher College was based on the Dartington Hall estate near Totnes, Devon, England, and offered ecology-centred degree programmes, short courses and horticultural programmes from 1991 until 2024. It was attended by students from all over the world.

## Description

The college was co-founded in 1990 by Satish Kumar, John Lane, Stephan Harding, Anne Phillips, and others. They were inspired by E. F. Schumacher, the economist, environmentalist and author of Small Is Beautiful, which argued that the growth of capitalism came at a very high human and planetary cost. The first course ran in 1991 with visiting teacher James Lovelock, best known for proposing the Gaia hypothesis.
All courses were centred around holism, ecology and sustainability. The college was committed to reversing the notion of education focussing on academic theory, and so all students were invited to engage hands-on with food growing in the gardens and preparation of meals in the kitchen.
In 2019, the college was named as a finalist in the Green Gown Awards which celebrate sustainability in education. The vegetarian College was recognised in the Food and Drink category as over half the food eaten by staff and students was grown in the college gardens by volunteers and students on the horticulture programmes.
The college was run by the Schumacher College Foundation, a registered charity. It has close links with the Dartington Hall Trust, a charity established in 1980 in part to continue the philanthropic work of the Elmhirst family, owners of the Dartington Hall estate. The college was based on the 1,200-acre estate, northwest of the town of Totnes, Devon.
The foundation suspended all academic programming with immediate effect in September 2024; the Dartington Trust said the college had been incurring substantial monthly losses.

## Courses

From its opening in 1991, Schumacher College ran residential courses exploring topics relating to the ecological worldview, with durations from a few days to several weeks. Teachers included many of the world's most influential figures in the fields of deep ecology, the Gaia Hypothesis, Goethean science, chaos theory and complexity science, ecopsychology, archetypal psychology, cultural ecology, ecological design, alternative technology, green economics and anti-globalization.
In partnership with the University of Plymouth, in 1998, Schumacher College launched a residential MSc in Holistic Science, the first programme of its kind. It was led by mathematical biologist Brian Goodwin and zoologist Stephan Harding. Regular teachers included the pioneer of the Gaia Hypothesis, James Lovelock, philosopher and physicist Henri Bortoft, geneticist Mae-Wan Ho, Goethean biologists Margaret Colquhoun and Craig Holdrege, philosophers Mary Midgley and Jordi Pigem, animal behaviourist Francois Welmelsfelder and designer Terry Irwin.
In the 2010s the college launched several other master's programmes which included an MA in Engaged Ecology, MA in Movement, Mind and Ecology, and an MA in Ecological Design Thinking and MA Regenerative Economics.
The college ran residential and online short courses throughout the year and a 6-month horticulture residency. They were designed to combine personal transformation and collective action through bridging the gap between theory and practice, knowledge and experience.
In 2019, the college developed its masters programmes to encompass a blended learning model to allow students to remain primarily in-country and study at the college in intensive two-week blocks.
In 2022, the college launched undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in regenerative farming, to become the first higher education provider in England to offer agricultural training exclusively focussed on ecologically-minded approaches to food production.