The Campus Of The Future

More radically, in Saudi Arabia, when King Abdullah University of Science and Technology opens its doors in 2010, it will not only be the world's sixth richest university, with a $10 billion endowment; it will also boast the globe's most revolutionary university structure—namely, no academic departments at all. All work will be done in only four interdisciplinary research institutes, focusing on biosciences, materials science, energy and the environment, and computer science and math.

It's not just universities' structures that are being reengineered. Students themselves are being offered radically new, international learning experiences. In the past, when schools like Georgetown or Cornell set up satellite campuses abroad, they acted like franchise operators—spreading the brand and generating cash but not providing new opportunities for students at the home campus to study abroad. Now that's changing. NYU's Sexton, for example, plans to use NYU's foreign campuses to internationalize the curriculums everywhere, rotating students among NYU's branches in New York, Abu Dhabi, Tel Aviv and Florence, as well as to affiliates in Berlin, Shanghai, Singapore and Buenos Aires. And we're not just talking about traditional semesters abroad. If Sexton has his way, entire future classes at NYU will graduate immersed in multiple languages and cultures, based on numerous stints overseas that have been integrated into their curriculums.

Students will profit from two other major rethinkings underway, concerning admissions and tuition. Olin College of Engineering, founded in 2001 in Needham, Massachusetts, has not only abolished academic departments and tenure for professors. It's also abolished tuition for all of its 300 students, financing teaching expenses through its $460 million endowment. The idea is to give students more freedom in choosing their careers without having to worry about paying off debt. Back at ASU, meanwhile, Crow promises to keep admissions inclusive even as the school's academic rating rises. He says the ultraselective admissions policies of schools like Harvard and Yale mean they merely refine youngsters whose success was already virtually guaranteed. Training those less sure to get ahead is far more valuable, he argues. And new studies back him up, showing that achievement differentials—that is, the "value added" to human capital by attending college—are actually higher at good-quality schools with less selective admissions than they are at the Ivies. "Not moving to more selective admissions is the most radical thing we're doing," says Crow. He's not the only one thinking in such terms; Stanford's Katz says she too is reevaluating the admissions strategy.

Of course, not everyone's a fan of these developments. Some professors have criticized Crow for turning ASU into a "corporate university" that focuses on spin-off revenue instead of academic learning. And there's a tension, says Max Planck's Audretsch, between universities trying to help the overall economy and their function as reservoirs and generators of basic learning. "The knowledge economy requires we get more out of our universities while keeping them great and not turning them into vocational colleges," he says. Stanford's Katz warns that amid all the moves to promote interdisciplinary thinking, there is a risk of connecting too many dots and losing sight of the need for solid data and science. Yet Crow is no more radical than the innovators who helped create the modern university in Germany in the 19th century, fusing teaching and research in new ways. If he can keep things in balance like they did, today's schools, students and the societies they serve could all profit from the process.

With Zvika Krieger in the U.A.E.

© 2008