As the new fall semester begins, I face my new students with both excitement and dread.

Excitement because I can find vibrant youth energy and unquenchable academic zeal from their glowing faces. Dread because the world outside our campus is dark and grim, filled with uncertainties.

Once they graduate, students will have to grapple with not only the world’s woes, such as wars and climate crisis, but also their personal perils, notably job scarcity. With these mixed feelings, I happened to have attended a university innovation forum in Seoul named "Out of the Box" early this week. As I chaired the forum, I felt both hope and despair for the future from the outliers of today’s global education.

The speakers no doubt started with a gloomy diagnosis of today’s education environment, particularly insurmountable challenges universities face. As technology develops at the speed of light, changing everything around us, universities are criticized for not changing fast enough.

Both in and outside Korea, college degrees are increasingly viewed as unnecessary as universities fail to prepare students for this fast-changing world. The arrival of artificial intelligence and other new technologies makes university learning all the more obsolete. A main concern of the educators at the forum seemed to be whether AI will eventually take over their jobs.

The situation is particularly dire in Korea. As its birth rate hit the lowest level in the world, causing an alarming population decline, student enrollment rates are falling at many Korean universities. Especially, regional universities and colleges have difficulties in recruiting new students and filling classrooms. Most Korean universities suffer a financial pinch as their student tuition fees have been frozen for 16 years under government pressure. Science and engineering universities strive to attract bright students but many of them prefer to go to medical schools.

Yet I could sense some hope from the discussion of the forum. Leaders from four innovative universities at home and abroad were present to share their experiences of tackling and overcoming the formidable challenges today’s universities face. They were Minerva University from the US, Oxford University from the UK, and Taejae University and Daegu Gyeongbuk Institute of Science and Technology from Korea. Gathered on the occasion of DGIST’s 20th anniversary, their leaders shed some light on how today’s universities can survive and even thrive in this tough environment via “Out of the Box” education innovations.

From Oxford University, Vice Chancellor Chas Bountra impressed the audience by introducing the school’s mega-hit research project to develop a COVID-19 vaccine. From the onset of the pandemic, Oxford teamed up with AstraZeneca, a British-Swedish pharmaceutical giant, and co-developed the vaccine in just nine months.

Having provided nearly 3 billion doses of the vaccine, the university-industry partnership saved a countless number of lives around the world. It was “the biggest knowledge transfer in vaccine development history,” according to Bountra.

That epoch-making success, however, didn’t come by accident, he added. For decades, Oxford has worked to partner with global businesses to translate its research achievements into real-life applications. The 928-year-old university, the oldest in the English-speaking world, has been collaborating with numerous global partners to solve global problems, such as the pandemic, climate change and mental health. At times, Oxford researchers and scholars themselves became bold entrepreneurs, experimenting new ideas and risky projects.

As a young, but fast-rising new university in the US, Minerva also shared its success story. Set up by Silicon Valley billionaires only 12 years ago, Minerva has ascended at a break-neck speed to become the “Most Innovative University in the World” for three consecutive years by the World’s University Rankings for Innovation, a UN partner organization. Thanks to that reputation, Minerva is now the most difficult university to enter in the US. At Minerva, only three out of 100 applicants are accepted, more competitive than Harvard or any other Ivy League schools.

What made Minerva so successful? Mike Magee, its president, says Minerva’s unique admission and teaching methods are largely responsible. In selecting new students, for example, Minerva doesn’t look at applicants’ standardized test results, such as SATs. Rather, it conducts an extensive and systematic evaluation on their future potential, not past records. It is also known for Global Rotation Program where students spend three years in major foreign cities for residential learning programs. Lacking actual physical campus, “the city is our campus,” he said. Because of its global approach, Minerva has students from more than 100 countries.

To a lesser degree, the two Korean universities also innovate their education. Taejae was established only a year ago as Korea’s first virtual university, but it already makes headlines by experimenting creative programs. Most notably, it actively uses AI to enhance class efficacy. For example, AI monitors and limits instructor remarks to incite more student participation.

As a science and engineering university, DGIST strives to enhance liberal arts and other subjects for a more interdisciplinary approach. Rather than bound by narrow majors, students freely pick their "tracks" that can combine several departments. DGIST President Lee Kun-woo believes the future of universities will depend on how they integrate different disciplines to cope with the enormous complexity of today’s society.

These “Out of the Box” education innovations are of course filled with numerous dangers and risks. As they enter completely unknown territories with bold experiments, many programs are bound to fail or not suitable under different environments. Nevertheless, these audacious experiments seem inevitable in today’s increasingly hostile education environment. Without them, there will not be that many universities left in the future.

Lee Byung-jong

Lee Byung-jong is a former Seoul correspondent for Newsweek, The Associated Press and Bloomberg News. He is a professor in the School of Global Service at Sookmyung Women’s University in Seoul. The views expressed here are the writer’s own. -- Ed.