UNITED WORLD COLLEGES: DEVELOPING A GLOBAL COMMUNITY OF LEADERS FOR THE FUTURE

The United World Colleges is more than a consortium of schools, it is a movement towards a new world order, building upon the visionary ethos of its founder, Kurt Hahn

The United World Colleges (UWC) are an integrated network of world leading senior schools which offer a boarding program to the brightest children who have demonstrated global leadership potential and who are keen to realise their potential in a robust, adventure-oriented and problem-solving experiential environment. With a key focus on global citizenship, the schools are famous for their diverse and international student bodies and their popularity with international royal families and world statesmen.

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ABOUT

Kurt Hahn was a renowned educator, whose experiential education program focused on resilience, robustness and hardiness. He believed that leaders were forged in fire and that a proper education to prepare leaders should thus be built accordingly. A Christian man, he sought to borrow from the traditional “muscular Christianity” approach that had been developed at Rugby School under Thomas Arnold and which had come to define the British Public School ethos, assumed at the top boarding schools across the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth.

Hahn’s first flagship educational project was the landmark Schule Schloss Salem in Germany, an iconic boarding school which quickly became the preferred institution for Germany’s upper social classes. He emulated this endeavour shortly thereafter when he established Gordonstoun in Scotland, famously the school attended by King Charles II and his father before him, Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh. Hahn’s pedagogy was becoming evident: take an old castle and turn it into a breeding ground for the future global leaders. These schools, famously, had no hot water and were furnished sparsely and bleakly in order to toughen up their pupils (many of whom inevitably hated their experience). With a distinctly international and, somewhat, elitist clientele, these schools became odd outposts often completely out of harmony with their local communities. With a focus on adventure-based education, pupils were encouraged to fend for themselves both indoors and outdoors. Self-learning and self-reliance were the objectives, albeit with a strong sense of Christian ministry underpinning much of the learning.

Hahn would continue to develop his movement with the establishment of the Outward Bound initiative. Outward Bound is a quasi-Christian adventure and experience based charitable program that seeks to engage young people in community development projects, often in the Global South. Again, structured around the concepts of self-direction and self-reliance, the program has often been the last preserve for troubled teens, dispatched on such missions by beleaguered parents, care workers or disgruntled schools. Indeed, the programs association with the Troubled Teen Industry has not been without controversy, many participants being engaged against their will and shipped out to potentially dangerous locations without support and care.

Hahn himself did not seek to create such a program and was not involved in the establishment of any such schools for vulnerable or troubled teens but those that have often did so embracing his philosophies and ideas, quoting the examples of his projects as their inspiration. The aforementioned Duke of Edinburgh would use Hahn’s ideas to formulate his own national initiative: the Duke of Edinburgh scheme, common to students in all schools in the United Kingdom and British schools overseas. Interestingly, the current Crown did not enjoy his time at Gordonstoun despite his father’s apparent love for Hahn’s ethos and has publicly spoken of his misery during his time at the school. He chose not to send his children to his Alma Mater, instead opting for the more traditional choice of Eton College. Perhaps even more remarkable is that Lord Mountbatten, with whom the young Prince of Wales was very close and often touted as a father figure was very much a proponent of the Hahn approach and was the first President of the United World College.

In the 1970s, and with much encouragement of his peers and sponsors, particularly Lord Mountbatten, Hahn sought to take his project further. He believed that he could use his existing model for schools and expand its ethos to global citizenship and, more significantly, global stewardship (which many have interpreted or accused his schools of making global leadership in some description of a New World Order). Hahn’s schools had quickly become the preserve of European and Asian royals, heirs to great fortunes and the offspring of leading statesmen. Many backed his new project. Thus in 1974 he opened Atlantic College in the stately home and old castle ruins of Llantwit Manor in Wales.

Under the umbrella of a new educational concept, United World Colleges was founded. This would mark the beginning of a global network of schools, designed to seek out the best and brightest pupils with, more importantly, the potential to become future leaders. Potential in this case, arguably, being more important than academic ability. United World Colleges were seeking those who would become senior politicians, rulers of nations, senior royals and so forth. They were quickly successful in this effort, with their alumni lists reading like a Who’s Who of the global elite.

Atlantic College was followed shortly thereafter by a raft of new schools, in Singapore, in New Mexico, Netherlands and so on. At the time of the writing, the group consists of 18 schools (19 if we include the associated Dilijan International School of Armenia which is co-located and managed by UWC Dilijan). The group’s Venezuelan outpost was nationalised early in its infancy.

The schools largely operate under the same proscribed formula: an all-boarding upper secondary school open to applicants from across the world. These are private schools which offer only the International Baccalaureate diploma to pupils entering the final two years of high school education (typically aged 15/16 to 18/19 years old). Applicants are required to make a case to their preferred school outlining why they should be admitted and how they hope to shape the global future.

Some of the schools (particularly where existing schools have been taken over or merged) may also offer day school options or have attached primary and lower secondary schools. For the most part, however, the schools are pre-university boarding schools akin to a British Sixth Form College.

The International Baccalaureate, which has become the global standard for many of the best independent schools in the world, was developed with significant input from the United World Colleges who were early adopters of the curriculum.

The IB Diploma is offered alongside the UWC proprietary curriculum which focuses heavily on experiences embracing the outdoors, sustainability, resource stewardship and community cohesion. UWC schools are explicitly globalist, engineering their student body such that diversity and representation from across the globe, including marginalised communities and developing nations, are embraced and normalised in student thinking. Global Citizenship is an integral part of life and learning at UWC schools by design.

Furthermore, despite the active recruitment of the children of the global elite and emergent leaders and influencers, the schools have a distinct code of conduct and organisational culture that prohibits obnoxious demonstrations of wealth and status. Pupils are heavily discouraged from so-called Excessive Displays of Wealth (known in UWC parlance as EDWs) and are indeed encouraged to criticise and chastise their schoolmates if EDWs are presented. The schools seek to foster a sense of equality amongst its students, an idea that, regardless of the apparent social realities, all pupils at UWC are equal. Members of the UWC community are encouraged to refer to one another as “Friend”, with the common greeting “Hello Friend” being a hallmark of the UWC community and often an identifier in public that signifies the speaker as having attended one of the schools and being a part of the great global community that has graduated therefrom. The schools’ detractors use these curiosities and oddities as evidence to support allegations that the school had strayed dangerously into cult territory and is ushering in the New World Order of conspiracy theories.

The various campuses of the UWC schools (which unlike many of its peer schools such as Avenues) do not operate as a single global campus concept. Indeed, each school has some degree of autonomy under the UWC structure, especially those that have been absorbed into the group inorganically. Nonetheless, the campuses are largely familiar to students from another. Typically, the schools are spartan compared to similarly priced boarding schools (many of which are disparagingly referred to as theme park schools by their rivals). Most of the UWC schools’ campuses seek to make the most of their environment, co-opting outdoor space and seeking to enhance their geography rather than contrast it. Outdoor gyms, classroom areas, theatres and leisure spaces are common. Boarding dormitories are relatively bare, common rooms typically even more so. Of course, this is changing as many of the campuses are expanded and refurbished to be more modern, more comfortable and, thus, more competitive against an increasing global educational landscape. Under Hahn and Lord Mountbatten, the schools rigidly adhered to the puritan ideals of muscular Christianity and the notion that enduring hardship fostered great leaders, an idea that the great European powers had become so as a consequence of the rigours of boarding school and colonial exploration. 

In today’s world, those concepts may no longer be as appropriate to a future global elite, the next generation of leaders just as likely to come from the Middle East, Asia, Africa and South America as they are from Europe, and the stiff upper lip approach ushered in by the Public Schools of England was no longer the defining characteristic of great leaders in an increasingly globalised world. Under the direction of current UWC President, Queen Noor of Jordan, the schools have seen new state-of-the-art buildings erected on campus, an embrace of digital technology and machine learning, somewhat at odds with the early Hahn ethos but essential to educating the next wave of leaders, tuned into the critical global issues).

The UWC concept is highly celebrated and critically-acclaimed. It is not without some eyebrow raising that very few negative reports exist of the schools, despite their efforts to put their pupils through perceived hardships. In fact, nearly all of the schools under the UWC umbrella have significantly expanded since their inception and many are currently undergoing further expansion to meet demand. Younger generations are extremely eager to undertake the UWC experience and equip themselves to make significant contributions to our global future.

Of course, this has met some criticism, not least from longer established schools and state education systems. Many critics have accused the schools of developing an elite class of globalist leaders, increasingly removed from the general population and the day to day problems faced by the average citizen or the increasing poverty gap. Some cynics have even accused the schools of being part of a Hagellian conspiracy to establish a New World Order. Foisting poverty and lack of choice on the lower classes, infringing on freedom and civil liberties under false pretexts in some great Orwellian power play. Using Hagellan dialetics, the notion of straw men and false flags in order to justify a significant policy change to achieve the real objectives of global control. Others have levelled the accusation that UWC is part of a cult movement, as are other proponents and adopters of Hahn’s ideologues. Thus, these schools and their connections to great power have often been aggregated alongside freemasonry, Fabianism, Rhodesian and illuminati organisations as constituents of a global agenda, despite the obvious disparities and competing objectives of these groups.

Regardless, the various schools that comprise the United World Colleges network, see themselves as Qatar the vanguard of a new model of education that prepares future leaders, equipped to navigate the complexities of a disparate but forever interconnected world, global citizens graduated with a purpose, a noblesse oblige.

Graduates of the UWC schools have clearly dispatched themselves with aplomb in these endeavours, with a disproportionately high number of senior politicians, heads of state and holders of the great offices of nations having completed their secondary education at a UWC member institution and often advocating on behalf of the movement.

UWC alumnae often matriculate to the leading universities of the world, including the Ivy League and Ivy+ peers, Oxbridge and top 20 global universities and colleges.

The UWC group also oversees the administration of the Davis Scholarship program, one of the world’s most prestigious academic scholarship schemes that places the top students with the top universities and creates an active networking community for scholarship recipients. Indeed, the Davis Scholarship is considered on a par with other renowned such schemes as the Rhodes Scholarship, the Fulbright Scholarship and [whats that other big scheme amongst US universities beginning with a M?], in that its recipients are often found in important diplomatic and government posts.

Introduction

COMING SOON

Member schools

Dilijan International School of Armenia

Read more here.

Li Po Chun United World College of Hong Kong

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Pearson College UWC

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UWC Adriatic

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UWC Atlantic

Read more here.

UWC Changshu China

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UWC Costa Rica

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UWC Dilijan

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UWC East Africa

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UWC ISAK Japan

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UWC Maastricht

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UWC Mahindra

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UWC Mostar

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UWC Red Cross Nordic

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UWC Robert Bosch College

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UWC South East Asia

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UWC Thailand International School

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UWC USA

Read more here.

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MEMBERS AND ASSOCIATES

CHOOSE LIST VIEW FOR A SIMPLE LIST OF ALL LISTED SCHOOLS. ALTERNATIVELY, YOU CAN SELECT SCHOOLS USING THE MAP BELOW.

FORMER MEMBERS OR ASSOCIATES

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