Deep Springer here. Was going to add DS as well.

@dredmorbius's summary is good. Couple additions/nuances:

L.L. Nunn founded Deep Springs to train public servants/leaders. He hoped they would play a larger role in society. (Some do, some don't...). To all incoming students, the school distributes a pamphlet written by Nunn called "The Voice of the Desert", in which he articulates his vision for the school and his appreciation for the mysteries of the wilderness.

Nunn founded at least three schools in his lifetime. The first was intended to train young men to become technical staff at his power plants. (Nunn supplied Tesla with power for some of his early experiments in Telluride, CO.)

The second school was founded back east. Its student body walked out en masse to volunteer for WWI.

The third school, Deep Springs, was founded in 1917, in a location isolated enough to preserve its student body in the face of social pressures. (Worked!)

At least nominally, the student body hires and fires the faculty, determines each semester's curriculum, and conducts the admissions process to replace itself. The extent to which it does that independently varies from one school administration to another. (When I was there, we had T-shirts that said "[[frontside]] In 1917, two radical social utopias were born... [[backside]] "Only one survived.")

It's a feeder school for larger, more prestigious institutions you've heard of.

It's also a really f*cking hard place to live, work and study, because of the sheer immensity of your responsibilities, and the intensity of social interactions.

Labor: I served as the farmer's assistant, the dishwasher, and the dairy boy when I was there. The dairy boy, the feedman and the cowboy are all responsible for the care, feeding and continued survival of livestock; the butcher is responsible for their merciful killing. The farmer's assistant has to grow the alfalfa to feed the cattle (or sell). Labor's no joke, and you can't screw it up without other people suffering. Life at DS is heavily interdependent, and the consequences of mistakes are real. (I've been told this may not be true at most liberal arts colleges...)

Social: If you don't like someone at DS, chances are you will still see them 4-5 times per day, including every meal, for two years. The school has an isolation policy. It is the only human community in a high-mountain desert valley. The near towns (Big Pine and Bishop, CA) are about a 30-40min drive away, IIRC. The students stay in the Valley for the length of each term. The only ones who leave are: 1) "the driver," who picks up groceries and applicants during application season; and 2) folks with a medical appointment. That's it. It also has a "no drugs or alcohol" policy during term, the enforcement of which is variable.

You might say it's free for a reason; you pay in other ways. I made several lifelong friends there, but I'm not sure I would counsel my younger self to do it again.

Every year or so, a mainstream media outlet rediscovers it. CBS did last year: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/deep-springs-college-california...

Wikipedia has a list of notable alumni. Many are named Bill.

Bill Vollmann

William Vandenheuvel

And a third Bill who supposedly founded DARPA. I'm blanking on his last name right now.