The University of the Future: Diversification, AI and Strategic Profiling in Higher Education

European higher education and research institutions stand at a critical juncture. Faced with unprecedented pressures from funding constraints, digital transformation and changing global circumstances, the sector must evolve while preserving its core academic values.

Universities across the continent grapple with balancing international competitiveness against inclusive access, maintaining research excellence amid bureaucratic burdens and adapting traditional pedagogical approaches to meet  twenty-first century demands. The fragmented policy landscape – with different national systems operating under broader European frameworks – further complicates efforts to address these shared challenges. 

ResearchConnect’s Engagement and Insights Manager, Annie Runkel, spoke to Professor Frank Ziegele, Executive Director at the Centre for Higher Education (CHE) in Gütersloh, Germany. He is an expert on higher education management and spoke to Annie about the universities of the future, his vision for new academic career pathways and why AI alone cannot end the labyrinth of bureaucracy in higher education.

AR: In your recent keynote at FORTRAMA, you talked a little bit about how it is a time of upheaval in higher education. Your presentation covered a whole range of different areas in which change is possible or even inevitable. One of the keywords you mentioned was the ‘diversification’ of funding. You also talked about the need for research institutions to work together and share resources. Another keyword that seemed important to me in this context was ‘unbundling’. Perhaps you could elaborate a little more on these different ideas?

FZ: You are talking about a couple of different things here. When it comes to financing, the diversification of resources is indeed one of the major trends. This is being driven from two sides. On the one hand, it is driven by the funders. In Germany, research funding has been growing over the years, and we are relatively well funded in comparison to other countries. But the basic funding for research and teaching at universities has not grown to the same extent. Instead of increasing basic funding, state funds are progressively being used to provide specific, targeted funds for certain areas and purposes only.

On the other hand, the diversification of resources is also driven by institutions. Diversification is a means of spreading risk. We are currently seeing that certain funding sources are not as reliable as we had previously thought. Now, if you have several independent sources, you have spread your risk and are thus in a more secure position.

Diversification therefore comes from both sides. Universities are exposed to this process, but they also play a strategic role in shaping it. These developments naturally deviate from the traditional image of the university, which was state-funded or covered its basic funding through endowments or tuition fees.

The diversity of funding pools is also increasing across the various levels of public finances. EU funding plays a much greater role. In Germany, we also have the two levels of the federal government and the federal states. This makes it even more complicated.

One trend that is also reflected in the funding is the expectation that universities become much more involved in innovation. The idea is that the process chain for the university does not end with the invention of something new, but that the university is involved right through to product development and market launch. This is also reflected in financing structures. In other words, there are new sources of funding. In Germany, for example, we see this trend reflected in the idea of setting up a federal agency for transfer and innovation. The activities universities are engaged in are becoming more diverse, and, as a result, the funding structures are becoming more diverse as well.

The second aspect you mentioned is unbundling. Unbundling refers to the fact that the tasks at universities – both in teaching and in research – are increasingly distributed across different roles. In the past, everything was organised around the (professorial) chair. The professor was enthroned on his chair, so to speak, and he had his academic staff to assist him. Today there are many completely new, completely different structures. There are roles for research managers or roles for AI and data experts. We see the same principle in the area of teaching. There are instructional designers or coaches and the like. There is a diversification taking place and the professor is no longer the central figure around whom everything is grouped. 

In general, it is no longer about the individual person, but rather about research groups, about alliances of various kinds. The place where research takes place is no longer automatically a chair. Instead, research takes place in completely new organisational structures. The matrix structure now found at some universities is a good example of this. Cross-cutting organisational structures, for example focusing on certain key topics the university addresses, are meant to overcome faculty silos. As you can see, there are also significant changes and a new diversity in the organisational structure of universities.

AR: I wonder what impact this has on the career development of academics. In the past, the career path for researchers was largely pre-determined and strongly integrated into the university structures with chairs and faculties and so on. How do you see these new developments impacting the careers of scientists? Will everyone now only work on an interdisciplinary basis?

FZ: There will always be a need for specialists. That will not change. We will definitely always need researchers who are deeply rooted in their discipline. However, what these new structures will demand of everyone is that researchers are able to work together with people from other disciplines. Unfortunately, this is something that not everyone learns in their career, even today. How do you work together when your research partners have a completely different research paradigm? This is something that researchers need to learn. 

Just as an example here from Germany. Some time ago, TU Dresden created ‘Open Topic Professorships’. The university set up professorships in different faculties, but the subject or topic of the professorships remained open. This means that a musician can perhaps also work in an engineering department and really innovative ideas can emerge from this. It creates completely new career opportunities. 

Another example are the AI professorships being created en masse in Germany. These professorships are designed to foster collaboration on applications for artificial intelligence across disciplines. This has a clear cross-sectional function. It is about interdisciplinary collaboration and also about recognising new opportunities.

AR: We’ve talked quite a lot about diversification. However, there also seems to be a counter-movement: the tendency for universities to develop a specific strategic profile. This means that universities are consciously concentrating their activities on certain topics or subject areas, rather than trying to do everything at once. At the same time, in France, there have been multiple university mergers in recent years where individual universities work together in alliances and clusters. By joining forces, they hoped to have better chances in the international rankings. Are these two completely different trends? Which strategy is the better one?

FZ: University identities can take many different forms – so diversification is also happening with the strategic profiles. Of course, profile building can also happen in a network. In my book, Authentic Universities – Effective university identities in times of transition (Passagen, 2025 and also in my presentation [at FORTRAMA], I showed a whole range of very different options. 

The ‘regional engine’, for example, is one of the options. This would be a university that sees itself as a driver of innovation in its immediate surroundings and promotes its region through cooperation and social commitment. This ‘regional engine’ could also be an association of several local universities together. This would go in the direction of what we have seen in France. The French cluster universities also have a regional focus. 

Another example from my book is the ‘European University’, grown out of the idea of the European University Alliances. Such a university is automatically a transnational institution that brings together multiple partners. The same applies to the ‘Grand Challenge University’, which is dedicated to tackling major global challenges. Here too, a merger of different institutions would make sense. I think almost all of the profiles I mentioned in the book and at the lecture also work in collaborative partnerships – regardless of whether it is a real merger or just a kind of network or alliance.

Where I am sceptical, however, is if the main purpose of the merger is for the university to rise in the rankings. The profiles presented in the book are not made for the traditional rankings. I don’t think universities should care about traditional league tables such as Times Higher Education or QS [World University] rankings, because these rankings lump all universities together. If a university wants to be top in the rankings, then it has to do exactly the same things as everyone else. This means publishing day in and day out in peer-reviewed journals and constantly adapting exactly to what the ranking algorithm prescribes. 

Here at the CHE, we have been advocating for years for a more diverse higher education system. One of Germany’s unique strengths is that we have such a strong system of universities of applied sciences that complements the traditional universities. These universities of applied sciences would never appear in the popular rankings. However, they might, for example, be excellent in creating industry relations. Or let’s take another example: the ‘Open Access University’. As an Open Access University, you are immediately out of the rankings, because you publish everything openly instead of using peer-reviewed journals. That is of course stupid. I am of the opinion that we have to get out of these thought patterns, and we have to stop chasing after the nonsense that the rankings are feeding us.

This is part of the CHE’s agenda. We do the CHE Ranking in Germany and produced the U-Multirank system for a number of years. Our objective was to make rankings multidimensional and to use a variety of criteria. In our ranking, for example, there was also a dimension for regional commitment. The ‘regional engine’ would perform well in this area. What comes out at the end is not a league table, but a profile of a university that shows where the strategic priorities lie and where the strengths are. If rankings worked like this, they would really reflect the diversity of universities.

A merger for the sole purpose of climbing a few places in the rankings would be the wrong approach. But many of the French universities have joined forces in regional mergers, also with the objective that they can play a bigger role in their region. I see that as a positive development.

AR: A concept that I took away from your presentation was ‘sunset legislation’. As far as I understood it, this is related to the idea of handing projects over to other actors after their initial development rather than holding on to them for too long. I was wondering if this also relates to the idea of ‘degrowth’ and the understanding that things can’t just keep growing infinitely?

FZ: It actually pertains to regulations. The idea is that when any rule is introduced, it always has an expiry date. This means that after a certain period of time it must be reviewed to ensure the rule still makes sense. For example, if the government introduces a new funding programme, the regulation for this programme should also specify when ‘the sun should set on it’. This means that the programme is not automatically extended indefinitely, but after x number of years there is a fundamental evaluation, and it is assessed whether the programme has had the right impact. Depending on this, a decision is then made as to whether the programme should continue and in what form. The idea is simply to include such review loops in the design of any rule from the outset.

AR: In your presentation, you also touched on the topic of reducing bureaucracy. The Leopoldina recently published a discussion paper on this topic and there is consensus that it would be sensible and important to reduce the administrative burden at all levels – at the state level, the federal level and the European level. There is also plenty of discussion around AI, especially when it comes to its use in research management or in the application process. If we have AI to help us with paperwork, do we even need to reduce bureaucracy? Or is the problem solved with the right AI assistant?

FZ: Yes, AI can of course help when it comes to excessive reporting, for example. You can achieve efficiency gains and save some time if you create your reports with AI. But, in my opinion, the problem isn’t time investment. It’s much more fundamental. Even if all the reports are written more quickly, they still don’t make any more sense. I think there need to be fundamental changes. 

The current system in Germany stems from a culture of mistrust. We scrutinise everything in detail. Wouldn’t it be possible to change that? How about we started by trusting that the rules are generally being adhered to and checking random samples instead of checking everything? Wouldn’t that be enough in the dealings between state universities and the ministries? We are talking about a change in culture or a change in values. AI can’t do that for me.

One of the big problems in Germany is that we still have the cameralistic approach to federal funding, which basically means line-item budgeting. AI may make the process easier for you, but it won’t free you from having to prove that every single euro was properly spent on this position or that business trip. Even the EU and the federal states are now partially moving to global budgets or lump sum budgets. This also allows universities to reallocate funds if necessary and gives them much more flexibility. But because the federal government is sticking to the old system, the universities have to keep two completely different accounting systems. This is a procedural issue, a fundamental change in basic principles. AI won’t solve that either.

AR: Thank you so much for the interview!

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.