Staff and students grumble about how research allegedly obscures the merits of exemplary teaching at universities. Modern efforts to move teaching from the periphery to the centre of the university were marked by books on the scholarship of teaching (SoT). Starting in the 1990s it became possible for academic staff to cite their SoT in claims for…

Challenges the notion that excellence requires higher education by analyzing the approaches to learning of self-educated people in a variety of fields ("farm-gate intellectuals"). Considers how they fit into the anarchist-utopian tradition in adult education and how universities and adult educators can benefit from understanding their…