The University As We Know It Is Finished

the role of the university

i am over halfway through my degree at cambridge, and i am a little underwhelmed

Sustainability

The sustainable University – structures, individuals and questions around institutional transformation 

Layoff University, Vol. 2: Progress Made, Lessons Learned - excellent notes

Reflections from my first month of unemployment

Universidade da Coruña

Universidade da Coruña

This big university system is embracing AI. Students and faculty aren't all on board

The California State University system offers an early look at what happens when an administration commits to a technology that its own community isn't convinced will improve education.

Alternative Universities: Speculative Design for Innovation in Higher Education

Imagining the universities of the future.How can we re-envision the university? Too many examples of what passes for educational innovation today—MOOCs especially—focus on transactions, on questions of delivery. In Alternative Universities, David J. Staley argues that modern universities suffer from a poverty of imagination about how to reinvent themselves. Anyone seeking innovation in higher education today should concentrate instead, he says, on the kind of transformational experience universities enact. In this exercise in speculative design, Staley proposes ten models of innovation in higher education that expand our ideas of the structure and scope of the university, suggesting possibilities for what its future might look like. What if the university were designed around a curriculum of seven broad cognitive skills or as a series of global gap year experiences? What if, as a condition of matriculation, students had to major in three disparate subjects? What if the university placed the pursuit of play well above the acquisition and production of knowledge? By asking bold "What if?" questions, Staley assumes that the university is always in a state of becoming and that there is not one "idea of the university" to which all institutions must aspire. This book specifically addresses those engaged in university strategy—university presidents, faculty, policy experts, legislators, foundations, and entrepreneurs—those involved in what Simon Marginson calls "university making." Pairing a critique tempered to our current moment with an explanation of how change and disruption might contribute to a new "golden age" for higher education, Alternative Universities is an audacious and essential read.

Stefan Collini · Squadrons of Pigs: Bonfire of the Universities

The problems with Britain’s universities are systemic and deep-rooted, not just local or contingent. Yet political and...

Will A.I. Make College Obsolete?

During a time when American trust in institutions is at an all- time low, A.I. is poised to accelerate a growing disillusionment with higher education.

Going to university does not broaden the mind

But going straight from school to work narrows it

What will be left for us to work on?

ICML 2026 invited keynote — slides and edited transcript, presented click-by-click as delivered. Arvind Narayanan, Princeton University.

Find Your People

Thank you to Bucknell University for inviting me to be this year's commencement speaker. And congratulations to the Class of 2025!  Watch the speech on YouTube. Thirty-two...

Goodbye, forever, probably.

I’m leaving developer relations and developer education. Rather than disappear completely unannounced, I wanted to tell you why.

Understanding GenAI and Campus Expectations | Center for Teaching & Learning