The value of education is in understanding the world and responding to it. This understanding and responding are based on collective human knowledge. To obtain that knowledge is one of the main goals of education. Academia provides a platform, time and cohort to learn and interact with it.
The result of education is the development of the mind and character. Of course, all this can be achieved outside academia, too. Just that it will have to displace, or at best, substitute for another activity. Whereas in academia, everything works ‘for’ education. Replacing academia may be an idea people are thinking of. The question remains what will be the form of its replacement.
I don’t have a concrete answer to this, but I guess it will not be a YouTube channel. Nor will it be an AI chat box. These are great tools that can enhance education, but by themselves have primary goals that are different from what education tries to accomplish: a better human mind and a better human character.
In its better form, academia’s explicit goals are exactly this. We humans, don’t have an alternative to academia (yet). Until then, we need to focus on the question: how can academia reinvent itself for the already bubbling AI era? Humans will be central to this transformation, of course, assisted by machines. The product of this transformation will be better human beings, and hopefully a better planet.
We know the goal. The confusion is in the process and means to that goal.
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