Editor’s note: This is the 13^th article since May 20, 2026 in an ongoing series by Dr. Andrew Maxwell, the Bergeron Chair in Technology Entrepreneurship in the Lassonde School of Engineering at York University. Every week – and occasionally every other week – we’ll present a new article by Maxwell, in a series whose wide-ranging and incisive themes encompass: Canada and innovation policy; productivity and industry; innovation frameworks; AI and higher education; research and intellectual property; technology adoption; entrepreneurship and commercialization; universities and higher education; entrepreneurship education; and AI and the future of work. 

This is Part 1 of a five-part series looking at the future of universities: Why are universities so difficult to change? What does AI mean for learning? If AI can teach, what is the professor for? And if some of the constraints around which universities were designed are disappearing, what might we design instead? Part 2 will be published on September 2, 2026.

Universities are not broken institutions. They are extraordinarily successful ones.

For centuries, universities have been among the most resilient and adaptive organizations in society. The core model – disciplines, degrees, tenure, peer review, departments, semesters – has persisted through wars, industrial revolutions, and technological change.

That durability is not accidental.

Universities were designed for a world in which knowledge evolved slowly, professions were stable, and society valued continuity over speed. Under those conditions, stability was not a weakness. It was a feature.

But when the environment changes quickly, the very features that once made institutions resilient can make them rigid.

Universities are not being disrupted because they failed.
They are being disrupted because they were optimized for a previous equilibrium.

Here’s what that equilibrium looked like – and why it no longer holds.

1. Tenure was designed to protect inquiry – not to drive educational innovation:

Tenure remains one of the most important protections in higher education. It shields scholars from short-term political and commercial pressure and allows long-term research to flourish.

But tenure systems overwhelmingly reward publications, citations, grants and disciplinary reputation. They rarely reward educational experimentation, experiential learning design or deep engagement with industry and community partners.

When incentives reward knowledge production over learning transformation, institutional energy follows.

The environment has shifted toward application, integration and impact. Incentives have not.

2. Universities were designed for a predictable student lifecycle.

The modern university assumes a student who studies full-time, attends campus physically, completes one degree, and enters a stable profession.

This model emerged during the expansion of higher education in the twentieth century. It worked when careers were linear and professional knowledge changed gradually.

Today, careers are nonlinear. Skills evolve rapidly. Learners return throughout life.

Universities still operate as if education happens once.

3. The degree structure prioritizes efficiency over flexibility.

Degrees organize learning into semesters, courses, credit hours, prerequisites and disciplinary sequences. This structure enabled universities to scale education to millions.

But it assumes learning happens in standardized units.

Experiential learning, interdisciplinary work and innovation projects do not fit neatly into credit-hour containers. Real problems do not align with semester boundaries.

The structure that enabled scale now constrains adaptability.

4. Committee governance protects legitimacy – but slows adaptation.

Universities rely on committees, peer review, consensus decision-making and shared governance. These mechanisms protect fairness and academic standards.

They work exceptionally well when change is slow.

They struggle when adaptation must be fast.

Innovation often requires small groups to experiment quickly. Universities are designed for collective validation, not rapid iteration.

5. Disciplinary silos build expertise but resist problem-solving.

Departments and disciplines allowed universities to develop deep expertise and strong research communities. That structure was enormously productive.

But most contemporary challenges –climate transitions, AI governance, health care systems, energy innovation – are interdisciplinary by nature.

Universities still organize around knowledge domains. Society increasingly organizes around problem domains.

The mismatch is growing.

6. Assessment systems reward individual performance in a collaborative world.

Exams, essays, and individual assignments were designed for scalable, defensible evaluation. They remain effective for measuring knowledge acquisition.

They are far less effective for measuring collaboration, creativity, judgment, innovation capability and professional competence.

Modern work is collaborative and ambiguous. Assessment remains individual and structured.

Students optimize for what is measured.

7. Faculty roles were designed around knowledge transmission.

Historically, faculty were experts who transmitted scarce knowledge and advanced research within defined disciplines.

That model worked when knowledge was scarce and access limited.

Today, knowledge is abundant – and increasingly AI-mediated. Faculty are being asked to function as learning designers, coaches, facilitators, and ecosystem builders.

Doctoral training rarely prepares them for this shift.

8. Budget models reinforce historical structures.

Funding models tied to enrollment, departments, and historical allocations create predictability. They also reinforce existing silos.

Interdisciplinary programs, experiential learning initiatives and industry partnerships often struggle because they do not fit traditional budget categories.

Financial architecture quietly shapes what is possible.

9. Universities are culturally designed to minimize failure.

Universities value rigor, certainty and correctness. These values are essential for scholarship.

But innovation requires experimentation, iteration and learning from failure.

Students quickly learn that grades reward correctness, not exploration. Faculty learn that institutional systems reward reliability, not risk.

The culture that protects academic excellence can unintentionally suppress institutional innovation.

10. The university model assumes knowledge scarcity.

For centuries, universities controlled access to books, laboratories, expertise and intellectual communities.

That scarcity justified campuses, lectures and degrees.

Today, knowledge is abundant. AI can generate explanations, examples, feedback and even drafts instantly.

The university’s value is shifting from providing knowledge to designing learning environments.

That requires a different institutional mindset.

 The stability paradox

None of these structures are mistakes.

They were rational responses to the conditions of their time. They enabled scale, legitimacy and extraordinary intellectual progress.

But the environment has changed.

Universities now operate in a world shaped by AI-supported learning, lifelong education, interdisciplinary problem solving, rapid technological change and pressure to demonstrate societal impact.

The institutional design has not fully caught up with the environment.

Universities are not resistant to change because they are stubborn.
They are resistant to change because they are structurally optimized for stability.

That stability produced centuries of success.

The next era of higher education will require something universities have rarely needed: The capability to redesign themselves intentionally.

If institutional architecture explains why universities struggle to change, it does not fully explain why learning itself still feels disconnected from the real world.

Even when universities innovate, experiential learning often remains peripheral.

So here is the deeper question: If universities want real-world learning, innovation and societal impact, why is it still so hard to deliver?

Part 2 in this series will look at what universities must become if they are serious about change.

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