Blueprint for a new university

Will anyone invest in my start-up idea?

This is the third post in a three-part series on the future of the university. Consider a paid subscription to read all three posts in full.

I love my job, but I wonder, as one does at the beginning of a midlife crisis, whether there is not a better one.

If I could save this moment and reload it whenever things don’t play out as I’d hoped, I know exactly what I’d do: I’d quit and start a new university. Yes, even now, when Harvard is being culled by America’s first anti-growth president; when science is mired in a replication crisis; when the bureaucratisation of research and teaching, including social impact, is reaching new extremes; when there are legitimate concerns about ideological biases within academia; and, when, in South Africa, our laws increasingly prevent us from appointing skilled foreigners. And – I almost forgot – in the midst of an AI revolution that threatens to upend much of what universities do. Even so, I’d start a new university.

This is what it will look like.