Prof. Raj Shree Dhar
dharrajshree@gmail.com
Today, as the world stands amidst unprecedented turbulence, a profound question confronts us: Will universities serve as teachers of freedom or as tutors of obedience? This dilemma is not abstract. It is rooted in the rapidly shifting realities of artificial intelligence, fragile economies, global crises, and a deeper uncertainty about the relevance of what we teach and learn.
The original idea of the university was the pursuit of truth and the cultivation of free inquiry. At their best, universities have nurtured critical citizens, dissenting voices, and innovators. They have been spaces where ideas could breathe, where freedom was not merely taught but practiced. Yet it also records the darker side: universities as tutors of obedience, aligned with state power, bureaucratic interests, or ideological conformity. In times of crisis, the temptation is always strong to mould universities into factories of compliance, producing human capital for narrow economic purposes rather than free citizens for society. The danger today is that, under the pressure of technological disruption and economic constraints, higher education may drift more toward obedience than freedom.
Nothing illustrates this tension more starkly than the rise of artificial intelligence. AI can hardly grade assignments, design lesson plans, and simulate tutoring. In the near future, it may replace many functions of human teachers, particularly in the dissemination of knowledge and skill training. Proponents hail this as efficiency and democratization of education; skeptics fear it as the dehumanization of learning. If AI takes over large parts of teaching, what becomes of the teacher? And what becomes of the student?
The risk is the erosion of employment in the education sectors itself, a significant source of professional stability worldwide. A university reduced to AI-driven modules risks becoming a tutor of obedience: efficient, standardized, and devoid of critical spirit. A university that retains the teacher’s role as a facilitator of freedom, using AI as a tool, not a replacement can continue to be a teacher of freedom. The choice lies not in technology itself but in how we deploy it.
At their best, universities have nurtured critical citizens and innovators. They have defended spaces for dissent, debate, and discovery, embodying the ideal of education as the pursuit of truth. Yet it also shows their complicity: universities as servants of state power, as institutions where obedience is rewarded over freedom.
The debate over AI and employment does not occur in a vacuum. It is framed within a broader discourse of crisis that shapes our age:
* Pandemics like COVID-19 revealed the fragility of global education systems. Overnight, universities scrambled to shift online, exposing inequities in access to technology and re-igniting debates about the value of in-person learning.
* Climate change poses existential threats, demanding universities rethink curricula around sustainability, ethics, and resilience. Future graduates must be equipped not merely for jobs but for survival and stewardship of the planet.
* Technological upheaval, including automation and AI, disrupts labor markets, making once-secure degrees obsolete.
* Pockets of wars and geopolitical conflicts create refugees, fracture collaborations, and challenge the idea of universities as international communities of learning.
This ongoing discourse of crisis does not simply pressure universities from the outside; it reshapes their inner logic. What is considered “relevant” to teach or research is increasingly filtered through crisis narratives. In this climate, the relevance of particular subjects is under scrutiny. Students, parents, and governments alike ask: What is the use of studying philosophy, literature, or pure mathematics when climate disasters, technological unemployment, and wars dominate the headlines? The utilitarian impulse is strong: to privilege data science, biotechnology, AI or climate engineering over disciplines seen as “non-essential.”
It reminds us that relevance is not merely about immediate utility. Philosophy has shaped ethics in medicine and governance; literature has preserved cultures through wars; pure mathematics has underpinned technological revolutions centuries after discoveries were made. The danger is that by narrowing the scope of what counts as relevant, universities risk producing technicians rather than thinkers, obedient laborers rather than free citizens. The balance of relevance is crucial. Universities must adapt to urgent crises, developing sustainable technologies, climate policies, and digital literacy, while also preserving the slow, critical, and reflective disciplines that cultivate freedom and meaning.
The gravest threat facing higher education today is not collapse. Universities have survived wars, pandemics, famines, and revolutions. They are remarkably resilient institutions. The real danger is co-optation: the subtle transformation of universities into arms of political, economic, or technological power. When universities become recruitment agencies for corporations, when research agendas are being dictated, when curricula are shaped solely by market demand, higher education loses its soul. This co-optation does not announce itself with dramatic closures or sudden destruction. It creeps in quietly, normalizing obedience and hollowing out freedom.
A co-opted university may continue to thrive financially, expand campuses, and just boast of employability statistics. But beneath the surface, its mission is compromised. It no longer asks uncomfortable questions, challenges dominant paradigms, or nurtures dissenting voices. In short, it ceases to be a university in the truest sense of the word. What then is to be done? The future of higher education lies in conscious choices. Universities must:
Redefine the teacher’s role: not as dispensers of information but as facilitators of critical inquiry and human growth, working alongside AI rather than being replaced by it.
Balance relevance with freedom: embracing urgent skills while defending disciplines that nurture reflection, creativity, and ethics.
Guard against co-optation: resisting narrow bureaucratic or political pressures by reaffirming academic freedom, independent research, and the public mission of education.
Respond to crises creatively: treating pandemics, climate change, technology, and wars not only as external shocks but as opportunities to reimagining curricula, pedagogy, and global collaboration.
Emphasize freedom as the core mission: ensuring that students leave universities not just as skilled workers but as free, critical, and responsible citizens.
Yet capture is never complete. Cracks appear, and through them, resistance grows. Students are often the first sparks. Faculty, too, resist. Through critical pedagogy, community-engaged research, and slower, more reflective scholarship, they reclaim the university as a site of conscience rather than compliance. Such struggles remind us that universities are not static institutions but living communities, animated by debate, dissent, and hope. At its best, education is not the production of efficient workers for crisis economies. It is the renewal of justice in dark times, the cultivation of imagination, and the stubborn insistence that another world is possible.
The university today stands at a decisive crossroads. Pressured by crises, seduced by efficiency, and threatened by co-optation, it risks becoming a tutor of obedience rather than a teacher of freedom. Yet cracks in the system reveal that resistance is alive: in student movements, in faculty conscience, in the enduring idea that knowledge must serve justice as well as utility. If universities allow themselves to be co-opted, they may survive materially but lose their soul. If they recommit to freedom, they can lead humanity through its crises with courage, conscience, and imagination. The choice is urgent, the stakes immense, and the responsibility undeniable.
The University of 2030 must be a garden of human flourishing. It must cultivate curiosity, critical reflection, and the courage to dissent. It must connect learners to communities, embedding education in real-world struggles for equity, sustainability, and peace. Such an institution will not measure its worth by the number of patents, rankings, or corporate partnerships it generates, but by how deeply it renews society’s capacity for wisdom, dialogue, and collective action. The task is not merely to transmit knowledge, but to transform lives; not merely to produce knowledge workers, but to form leaders of conscience and imagination. This is the call to innovation and ethics that must guide the next chapter of higher education.
(The author is former Dean-Cluster University of Jammu & Principal Higher Education Department, J&K Government, J&K).
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