"[John Andrew] Rice and his fellow dissidents believed that a college should be owned and run by its faculty and students."

"There would be no board of trustees, no dean, no president and limited administration beyond a secretary, treasurer and the lead role of 'rector,' all of whom taught classes, as well. There was also a Board of Fellows, which was composed of several professors and a student representative — this group would primarily make business decisions on the college’s behalf — as well as a 'disemboweled' advisory council... that had no real power. As for the curriculum, there wasn’t one, really: neither required courses nor formal grades."

 
From "Why Are We Still Talking About Black Mountain College? In 1933, a handful of renegade teachers opened a school in rural North Carolina that would go on to shape American art and art education for decades to come" by Amanda Fortini (NYT).

"Professors taught what they wished, and students graduated when (or if) they wanted — only about 55 of the 1,200 or so students who attended Black Mountain in its 24-year existence attained a formal degree — as long as they passed two sets of exams, one roughly at the halfway point and the other before the end of their tenure, whenever they decided that was. The hierarchy, too, was minimal, with students and most faculty living in the same building and taking their meals together. There were none of the 'usual distinctions... between curricular and extracurricular activities, between work done in a classroom and work done outside it.' Students often performed chores as part of the 'work program'; afternoons were left free for activities outdoors, which might have included chopping wood, clearing pasture and planting, tending or harvesting crops.... By all accounts, the manual labor was not only fun but gave students a meaningful sense of contributing to the day-to-day maintenance of the college. It was also a great leveler. 'You might be John Cage or Merce Cunningham... But you’re still going to have a job to do on campus.' 

"Among Black Mountain’s most visionary notions was to put the arts 'at the very center of things.' Rice believed that the study of art taught students that the real struggle was, in his words, with one’s 'own ignorance and clumsiness.' The idea was not to produce artists per se... but thinking citizens who, honed by the discipline inherent to the arts, were capable of making complex choices — about their own work and, ultimately, in the larger world."