The Uni Currency Project: Resource Page

Since 2020, the Money on the Left Editorial Collective has been arguing for a new approach to university finance that we call the ‘uni’ proposal. Below are links to our essays and interviews related to this project, plus a reference – inspired by our work – to universities ‘minting their own currencies’ in Cory Doctorow’s speculative 2023 novel The Lost Cause.

Essays:

  1. ‘[W]e propose that universities circumvent negligent state and federal legislatures and self-finance future expenditures by issuing their own credits called “Unis.” […] Unis secure […] the freedom to reimagine higher education beyond the crisis.’ Maxximilian Seijo, William Saas, Scott Ferguson, and Benjamin Wilson, ‘#Unis4all: An Open Letter to the U.S. Higher Education Community,’ MR Online (2020): https://mronline.org/2020/05/15/unis4all-an-open-letter-to-the-u-s-higher-education-community/
  2. ‘By issuing Unis, universities assert and expand their rights as allocators of credit in their communities. They take responsibility for social and ecological wellbeing in the face of negligent legislators [… and] refuse to place arbitrary fiscal strictures before education, health, and prosperity.’ Scott Ferguson, Benjamin Wilson, William Saas, and Maxximilian Seijo, ‘Overcoming COVID-19 Requires Rethinking University Finance,’ b2o (2020): https://www.boundary2.org/2020/07/scott-ferguson-benjamin-wilson-william-saas-maxximilian-seijo-overcoming-covid-19-requires-rethinking-university-finance/
  3. ‘Guided by a pragmatic pedagogy of embedded demystification, Uni users may even come to embrace and refine what Jakob Feinig (2020) has described as a “moral economy of money,” or a framework for political economy that celebrates rather than eschews the radically democratic potentials of the modern money form.’ William O. Saas, Benjamin C. Wilson, Scott Ferguson, and Maxximilian Seijo, ‘The Uni Currency Project: Democratic Finance for Public Higher Education After COVID-19,’ Global Institute for Sustainable Prosperity (2020): https://www.global-isp.org/wp-content/uploads/WP-128.pdf
  4. ‘While the extant tuition-based model erroneously treats money a private and finite thing, […] a grant-based model for higher ed, by contrast, activates money’s proleptic and fundamentally generative character as endogenous credit.’ William O. Saas and Scott Ferguson, ‘Performative Public Finance for Higher Education: Academic Labor and the Green New Deal,’ Liminalities: A Journal of Performance Studies (2020): http://liminalities.net/16-4/finance.pdf
  5. ‘As strong public anchor institutions with substantial resources already in place for robust public provisioning, colleges and universities must be unleashed in support of the construction of a just society that cultivates the human spirit through knowledge and collaboration.’ William O. Saas, Benjamin C. Wilson, Scott Ferguson, and Maxximilian Seijo, ‘The Uni Currency Project: Democratic Finance for Public Higher Education After COVID-19,’ in Care, Climate, and Debt: Transdisciplinary Problems and Possibilities (2022): https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-96355-2_12
  6. ‘The money question is up for grabs for the first time in nearly a century. […] Breaking monetary silence, the uni movement revives moral possibilities that are inherent in communities, institutions, and the people who inhabit them.’ Scott Ferguson and Benjamin Wilson, ‘Stop Trying to Find the Money—Create It,’ Academe (2022): https://www.aaup.org/article/stop-trying-find-money%E2%80%94create-it
  7. ‘Today’s “Uni” currency project […] reimagines the university as a currency-issuing institution, a kind of public or community bank that can create money as a means of provisioning itself and mobilizing campus resources in more democratically accountable ways.’ Andrew J. Douglas, ‘Modern Money and the Black University Concept,’ Money on the Left: History, Theory, Practice (2024): https://moneyontheleft.org/2024/04/19/modern-money-the-black-university-concept/
  8. ‘In view of the cataclysmic failures of the present system and the dearth of alternative proposals, it is time to unleash the public credit that has always been at the heart of higher education and to recognise its potential to arrest the current crisis and to advance the public purpose.’ Rob Hawkes and Scott Ferguson, ‘UK Universities in Crisis? Time to Transform Higher Ed Finance,’ Money on the Left (2025): https://moneyontheleft.org/2025/01/16/uk-universities-in-crisis-time-to-transform-higher-ed-finance/
  9. ‘As a university-issued currency, the “Uni” would rest on the […] public authority to create credit – making the declaration of dependence I owe you to the academic and wider community […]. In short, expanding the finance franchise to universities would encapsulate and reaffirm the public trust, collective credit, shared responsibility, and (un)conditional openness that are the ontological foundations of social life, and thus of higher education and money as social forms.’ Rob Hawkes, ‘(Un)conditional Openness: Towards a Neochartalist Theory of Money and Trust,’ Money on the Left: History, Theory, Practice (2025): https://moneyontheleft.org/2025/05/21/unconditional-openness-towards-a-neochartalist-theory-of-money-and-trust/
  10. ‘This experiment transforms abstract monetary theory into lived experience, helping students understand money as a social technology and public project that can be redesigned to serve different purposes and values through circuits of issuance and redemption.’ ‘Assignment Prompt: A Classroom Currency Experiment,’ Money on the Left (2025): https://moneyontheleft.org/2025/06/16/assignment-prompt-a-classroom-currency-experiment/

Podcasts:

  1. ‘Place, Participation & #Unis4all with Benjamin Wilson,’ Money on the Left (2020): https://moneyontheleft.org/2020/06/19/place-participation-unis4all-with-benjamin-wilson/
  2. ‘Unis for All with Ben Wilson and Scott Ferguson,’ Macro n Cheese (2020): https://realprogressives.org/mnc-podcast-ep/episode-80-unis-for-all-with-ben-wilson-and-scott-ferguson/
  3. ‘Scott Ferguson & Maxx Seijo: The Choreographers Of Credit,’ The MMT Podcast with Patricia Pino & Christian Reilly (2020): https://pileusmmt.libsyn.com/69-scott-ferguson-maxx-seijo-the-choreographers-of-credit
  4. ‘Democratizing University Finance,’ Money on the Left (2022): https://moneyontheleft.org/2022/10/02/democratizing-university-finance/
  5. ‘New Deal for Higher Ed w/ Jennifer Mittelstadt,’ Money on the Left (2023): https://moneyontheleft.org/2023/06/01/new-deal-for-higher-ed-w-jennifer-mittelstadt/
  6. ‘The Black University Concept with Andrew J. Douglas,’ Money on the Left (2024): https://moneyontheleft.org/2024/06/02/the-black-university-concept-with-andrew-j-douglas/
  7. ‘The Black University & Community Currencies,’ Money on the Left (2025): https://moneyontheleft.org/2025/05/01/the-black-university-community-currencies/
  8. ‘The Black University & Community Currencies, Pt.2,’ Money on the Left (2025): https://moneyontheleft.org/2025/06/11/the-black-university-and-community-currencies-pt-2/

Fiction:

Cory Doctorow, The Lost Cause (2023): https://torpublishinggroup.com/the-lost-cause/

“[…] but the wild-ass part is the munis and unis.”

“I sorta know what those are—”

“Local currencies,” she said. “It was a big idea in the early GND days, when unemployment was up at thirty percent and the fed wouldn’t spring loose any more relief money. Towns and universities started minting their own currencies, managed by credit unions. The FDIC said it would yank their charters and the cities said they didn’t give a shit, they’d keep using them, charter or no, and then Uwayni got elected and it didn’t matter anymore, because she started the Jobs Guarantee.”

“Right,” I said. “Before my time.”

“Mine too, but it was a big deal for the OG Blue Helmets, those Canadians, who said that it was the threat of wildcat money that gave their prime minister the leverage she needed to get the Bank of Canada to give in. It’s been this kind of legendary weapon ever since, like a lost mystical doomsday sword that no one dared to use.”

“Until now.”