Universities must dare to become architects of the future

The modern university stands at a crossroads unlike any it has encountered before. Once regarded as trusted centres of knowledge, civic debate and human flourishing, universities are now facing a series of converging crises that threaten their very foundations.

The stakes could not be higher: it is not only the future of higher education that is at risk, but also the intellectual, social and moral vitality of the societies they serve. If universities falter, the ripple effects could destabilise democratic institutions, fracture social cohesion and impoverish the collective search for meaning and purpose in a rapidly changing world.

At the core of this moment lies a convergence of five deeply interrelated crises: truth, autonomy, belonging, survival and purpose. Each strikes at a fundamental role that universities have traditionally played, and each demands far more than incremental adjustments.

To endure and lead in the 21st century, universities must reconceptualise their identity – not merely as transmitters of knowledge, but as resilient, ethical, civic institutions capable of embracing complexity without collapsing under its weight.

Universities have always been shaped by tension: the tension between advancing knowledge and serving society, between preserving tradition and fostering innovation. Yet today, those tensions have intensified into something far more volatile. In recent years, scholars introduced the idea of the ‘University Trilemma’ to capture this growing complexity – the struggle to balance three increasingly conflicting imperatives: truth, autonomy and belonging.

The trilemma marked a profound shift in higher education’s traditional mission. Where once these ideals reinforced one another, universities now find that defending one often puts the others at risk.

Upholding academic truth through rigorous research, open inquiry and evidence-based teaching has increasingly invited political backlash. In polarised societies, even careful, peer-reviewed findings on issues such as climate change, racial inequality or public health have been recast as partisan activism. Academics face growing accusations of ideological bias, and universities risk alienating governments, donors and sectors of the public they were once able to count on.

Defending institutional autonomy, historically a pillar of academic freedom, has become equally fraught. Universities that resist aligning with political agendas or national priorities are increasingly depicted as elitist, unaccountable or out of touch with the public interest. In trying to safeguard their independence, many institutions inadvertently fuel broader narratives of mistrust surrounding higher education.

Efforts to expand belonging, while essential for redressing historic exclusions, have also generated new complexities. Initiatives to diversify faculties, revise curricula and address systemic injustices, though urgently needed, are often perceived by critics as threats to academic standards or as restrictions on open debate.

In their efforts to create more inclusive spaces, universities frequently find themselves walking a fine line between broadening access and protecting the conditions necessary for critical inquiry.

Structural vulnerability

The University Trilemma, then, has not only sharpened longstanding tensions but exposed a deeper structural vulnerability: the core ideals of higher education no longer easily coexist in an increasingly fragmented world. Defending one principle often risks weakening another. Navigating these contradictions has become a defining challenge for university leaders around the globe.

This broader reality is evident in multiple contexts. In Hungary, the government’s restrictions on academic freedom have become emblematic of a broader authoritarian turn in state capitalism. In India, growing political intolerance has led to fierce battles over curriculum content and academic autonomy. In the United States, ideological polarisation has created deep divisions over the role and value of universities, with public trust in higher education becoming increasingly partisan.

These examples demonstrate that the core commitments to truth, autonomy and belonging can no longer be taken for granted.

Yet while today’s crises are acute, the tensions themselves are not entirely new. Universities have always operated within dynamic political and economic forces. What is different now is the scale, intensity and mutual reinforcement of these pressures – and the degree to which they demand a fundamental transformation.

The tensions relating to truth, autonomy and belonging once defined the central struggle of modern universities. During the era of the trilemma, institutions were often accused – sometimes fairly, often simplistically – of losing touch with the societies they served. In various countries, universities were branded either as strongholds of progressive ideology or as failing defenders of national values.

As universities sought to uphold truth, autonomy and belonging, the balance between these ideals became increasingly fragile. Speaking truth to power risked political repercussions.

Expanding access and representation triggered accusations of bias. Institutional independence – long a cornerstone of academic life – was eroded by shrinking public investment and growing government intervention.

From trilemma to quintilemma

Through it all, many universities remained committed, however imperfectly, to holding these three principles in tension. Yet today, even the trilemma no longer captures the depth of the challenges higher education faces. The crisis has grown larger, sharper and more existential. Beyond the tensions among truth, autonomy and belonging, universities must now grapple with two additional forces: survival and purpose.

This expanded reality – what we might call the quintilemma – reflects a five-dimensional crisis that threatens not only the university’s relevance but its very existence. Universities are no longer merely navigating tensions among competing ideals; they are confronting profound disruptions that demand a reimagining of their role in society.

Two global forces have accelerated this shift. The Fourth Industrial Revolution has radically challenged traditional models of academic authority and autonomy, with artificial intelligence, platform economies and automated knowledge production reshaping how information is created, distributed and valued.

At the same time, the COVID-19 pandemic forced an abrupt digital pivot, exposing vulnerabilities in infrastructure, governance and financial models, while widening existing inequalities in access and opportunity.

These forces did not create the crises facing universities; rather, they exposed and magnified longstanding structural weaknesses. The pandemic revealed how dependent many universities had become on private digital platforms. It accelerated the rise of alternative credentials, flexible learning pathways and new market entrants who now compete directly with traditional degrees.

The Fourth Industrial Revolution has further amplified these disruptions: generative AI tools, blockchain-verified credentials, automated tutoring platforms and remote labs are beginning to displace the traditional university monopoly on knowledge and certification.

Meanwhile, broader forces of climate disruption, global conflict and demographic transformation continue to reshape the social contract that once anchored higher education. Universities find themselves in a world where neither their status nor their survival can be assumed.

The addition of survival and purpose to the trilemma marks a decisive shift. Questions of truth, autonomy and belonging remain central – but they now operate within a broader existential frame.

Universities must ask not only how to defend their ideals but whether they can adapt quickly enough to preserve their own viability. And they must confront perhaps the most difficult question of all: What is the enduring purpose of the university in a fragmented, accelerated and uncertain world?

The five pressures

The ‘University Quintilemma’ is shaped by five interwoven and mutually reinforcing forces – truth, autonomy, belonging, survival and purpose – pressures that no institution can address in isolation. Navigating this new landscape requires more than defending isolated principles. Each pressure intersects with and amplifies the others, creating a web of tensions that traditional strategies can no longer untangle.

• The fragmentation of truth: Truth today faces not only external attack but internal fragmentation. The challenge is no longer limited to defending scientific rigour or academic evidence. It now requires operating within a landscape where knowledge itself has been destabilised – politicised, algorithmically amplified and often valued more for its emotional resonance than for its veracity.

• The erosion of autonomy: Autonomy, too, is under renewed strain. No longer solely threatened by overt political interference, universities now face subtler dependencies born of the digital age. Institutions that once prided themselves on self-governance increasingly rely on commercial platforms, private data infrastructures and external funding sources.

• The epistemic challenge of belonging: Belonging has evolved into a fundamental epistemic challenge. Inclusion is no longer simply a question of who is admitted to the institution; it is a matter of whose knowledge is recognised, whose histories are legitimised and whose futures are imagined within the academic project.

• The existential struggle for survival: Survival has become an existential question. Financial models based on tuition fees, global student mobility and competitive research funding are increasingly fragile. Climate disruption, demographic shifts and geopolitical instability threaten the operational viability of universities across regions.

• The reclamation of purpose: Purpose looms larger than ever. In an era marked by automation, planetary crisis and profound social fragmentation, universities must articulate a mission that transcends credentialing individuals for employment and speaks instead to the collective futures of democratic societies, ethical technologies and sustainable worlds.

A new civic role for higher education

Facing these intertwined pressures, the solution to the quintilemma is not to prioritise one value over others, nor to seek simple compromises. Instead, universities must embrace these tensions as the conditions of their renewed relevance. The future of higher education will not be secured by returning to past ideals. It will be forged by evolving into new forms of civic and planetary responsibility.

This demands a redefinition of core functions.

• The civic practice of truth: Truth must no longer be conceived merely as the defence of disciplinary expertise or peer-reviewed production. In an age of algorithmic disinformation and epistemic fragmentation, universities must become architects of public reason – sites where societies can rehearse the difficult work of discerning shared realities without collapsing into tribalism or manufactured doubt.

• Distributed autonomy: Autonomy must be reimagined as distributed resilience rather than isolated independence. True autonomy will require universities to build collaborative intellectual ecosystems that span sectors, cultures and regions, insulating knowledge production from capture by any single political or technological force.

• Epistemic plurality and belonging: Belonging must be elevated from a matter of admission to a transformation of epistemic structures. Universities must recognise and integrate indigenous, community-rooted and historically marginalised knowledge systems – not merely as forms of inclusion, but as essential to reimagining inquiry, value and relevance itself.

• Existential stewardship for survival: Survival must be reoriented from financial metrics to existential stewardship. Universities must view themselves as custodians of long-term societal capacities: critical thinking, democratic deliberation, ethical imagination and planetary literacy. Survival will depend not on chasing market relevance but on anchoring education in the skills and sensibilities needed to sustain human and ecological flourishing.

• The moral reclamation of purpose: Purpose must be reclaimed as the animating force of the university’s evolution. In a post-industrial, post-pandemic world, the mission of higher education must extend beyond credentialing individuals for economic mobility. Universities must cultivate the collective imagination needed to confront shared existential threats – climate collapse, algorithmic governance, political fragmentation – and to envision alternative futures grounded in justice, sustainability and dignity.

In short, universities must stop seeing themselves as engines of adaptation to the world as it is. They must dare to become architects of the world as it could be.

Embracing complexity

The University Quintilemma is not simply a managerial crisis or a temporary disruption. It signals the exhaustion of an inherited model of higher education – and the urgent need to reimagine what universities are, whom they serve and how they contribute to the future of democratic and planetary life.

Institutions that cling to old paradigms – disciplinary silos, extractive research metrics, market-driven credentialing – may survive for a time, but they risk drifting into irrelevance.

Incremental reforms will not be enough. What is needed is a fundamental renewal of purpose, structure and imagination.

Reimagining the university begins with embracing complexity rather than retreating from it.

It means cultivating public spaces where truth is pursued as a dynamic, collective endeavour; where autonomy is sustained through distributed resilience rather than isolated independence; where belonging transforms not only who enters the institution but how knowledge itself is constructed and valued; where survival is anchored in long-term stewardship rather than short-term competition; and where purpose is reclaimed as a moral and civic commitment to future generations.

In confronting the quintilemma, universities have an opportunity to move beyond institutional self-preservation towards becoming architects of a new civic architecture – one capable of sustaining democratic life, ecological viability and shared human dignity in the century ahead. The stakes are not only academic. They are civilisational.

At their best, universities have never been merely institutions; they have been living experiments in the possibilities of human understanding and solidarity. Today, in a world that demands new forms of courage and connection, higher education has the chance to become something more than it has been. Renewal will not come easily, but it remains within reach – for those willing to imagine, to build and to believe that knowledge still carries the power to heal and to transform.

James Yoonil Auh is the chair of computing and communications engineering at KyungHee Cyber University in South Korea. He has worked across the United States, Asia and Latin America on projects linking ethics, technology and education policy.

This article is a commentary. Commentary articles are the opinion of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of University World News.