In response to the encroaching privatisation and cost of University in England, there is a movement to found Free Universities.
Some friends working in North Sheffield around Parson Cross have recently been awarded an Arts Council grant and as part of their work they are founding a Poly-Technic.
In the past Universities were the better of the higher education institutes, Polytechnics the lesser. The latter were given University status in 1992.
I like the irony of this: the re-appropriation of a term and its re-emergence as a radical title.