What a university is for when the content is free.
I have spent much of my life in and around universities — as a student in Berlin, the United Kingdom, South Africa, Thailand, the Philippines, the United States and Australia, and for the past decade as an industry partner working with their students. A panel invitation on employability and the future of work made me set these thoughts down. They are the views of a long-standing user, and of someone who hires its graduates — not of a scholar of higher education. I offer them in that spirit.
For nine centuries the university’s core method answered one problem: information was scarce. The lecture — lectio, a reading-aloud — was invented because books were hand-copied and rare. That problem is now inverted; content is abundant, cheap, and increasingly free. Which forces an old, unwelcome question: if the content is free, what is the university for?
Ten pieces follow — two on how I came to the question, five on the answer, and three in honesty to close.