The Future of Universities and Evidence-Based Research

A think piece for the ESPAS 2016 conference by the European Parliamentary Research Service (@EP_ThinkTank)

Among the European Union’s best assets are its highly educated population, its universities, and its research capacity. Europe’s universities have, through the course of their rich history contributed hugely to modern thought and to modern science. They have helped shape the world that we know today.

Past glories will not sustain us forever. Universities need to change in order to serve the needs of tomorrow’s economy and society. This is not in debate. There is a need for more skills — and more research — in science and technology, for example. Universities will continue to have a central role in the drive for technological innovation.

We face a future in which machine capacity — and machine intelligence, albeit with certain constraints — will far outstrip human capacity. Technology holds immense promise — but this promise is accompanied by threats, and even existential threats. It follows that the need to improve our knowledge of the human and social sciences does not diminish — it increases.

Change should not mean throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Cutting-edge education and research on the human dimension will remains fundamental.

It may be that the long-standing division between natural sciences on one side, and social sciences on the other, has become outdated. There is certainly room for a conversation not just about becoming interdisciplinary or cross-disciplinary, but about rethinking inherited concepts of disciplines and their boundaries.

Most of all, universities must play their part in developing the values and norms that are needed to guide and direct our path into a future that will look very different from the present, and that will offer a completely different set of opportunities and risks.