When ChatGPT can do your homework, you might wonder: What’s the point of a university? These days, many people are questioning what universities are good for, and whether they might be as out-of-date as dial-up internet. Maybe today’s universities should be changed: different kinds of classes, different kinds of degrees, different kinds of campus life. Or maybe they should evolve into something that doesn’t look like today’s colleges at all.
What do you think Cornell should look like in the coming decades?
These are the kinds of questions we’ll be asking you in the coming months. “We” are the Provost’s Committee on the Future of the American University. Our job is to work with you — the Cornell community — to envision what Cornell should become in the coming decades.
At a time when technology is transforming rapidly, the federal government is shifting how it works with universities, and many people see colleges as too expensive, too out of touch or too liberal, how do we want to move forward as a community? What is our vision of who we can be?
To answer these questions, we’ll be holding a series of community events. The first event took place last Tuesday, when students, faculty, staff and community members met to debate the question, “Does AI do more harm than good in higher education?”
The discussion, moderated by Doug Sprei from the College Debates and Discourse Alliance, centered on whether and to what degree AI tools support learning or do the learning for us. Some students described the benefits of having access to a 24/7 personalized tutor to answer their questions, while others decried outsourcing thinking to a machine. One professor described how different Cornell is today from his college experience in the 1960s and ’70s, likening AI to the barbiturates that were popular then: something that seems fun, but in the end just wastes your time.
Participants debated whether the goal of higher education is to learn facts and skills in preparation for a particular career or whether the goal is to learn how to think. Many agreed that AI could aid the first goal, but not the second. The conversation highlighted the complex trade-offs in considering how we should incorporate AI into the learning experience at Cornell.
Our next event will be on Nov. 18, when John Tomasi of Heterodox Academy will be speaking on “The University at a Crossroads — and How We Can Build Cultures of Open Inquiry.”
In an age of political polarization, universities have been caught in the crosshairs. As largely left-leaning institutions, they are often accused of siding with the left and sidelining conservative and libertarian perspectives. The federal government has cited the need for open inquiry — the freedom to question common assumptions and viewpoints — as a reason to withhold grant support and pursue Justice Department inquiries into university practices.
Yet at the same time, this pressure can itself threaten open inquiry when it limits the topics and perspectives that are deemed allowable at universities. Tomasi will discuss a third way: how universities can intentionally build a culture where students, faculty and staff can feel comfortable engaging with a variety of viewpoints and constructively disagree with one another.
We invite you to bring your concerns and ideas (and disagreements) to this conversation.
Signed,
Phoebe Sengers, Co-Chair of The Committee on the Future of the American University
Professor in Information Science and Science & Technology Studies
The Committee on the Future of the American University is a group of 18 faculty appointed by the provost to explore how the university can evolve to best serve future generations while pursuing its core mission of education, scholarship, public impact, and community engagement. They welcome ideas and feedback at fau@cornell.edu.
