by Deborah Longworth and Tom Harrison, Wonkhe
UK universities are experiencing intense scrutiny, as financial pressures coincide with growing public debate about the purpose and value of a degree.
The UK’s strategic challenges – skills shortages, productivity concerns, industrial strategy, rising student loan debt, and the accelerating influence of digital technologies – have all sharpened expectations that higher education should produce graduates whose knowledge and capabilities are developed through learning that prepares them to succeed in life beyond university and to contribute to areas of societal need.
Generative AI tools, with their promise of personalised tutoring on demand and at scale, are prompting unsettling questions about the distinctive value of university learning. Initial concerns about academic integrity and responsible AI use, while still present, have widened into deeper questions about learning itself. Students worry that an over-reliance on AI might erode their own critical thinking abilities, staff grapple with designing learning and assessment that genuinely develop and demonstrate human knowledge and capabilities, while employers seek graduates who are technologically fluent yet also able to exercise judgement, think creatively and collaborate effectively. Across the sector, the conversation is becoming as much about how to reaffirm what is uniquely human in the focus of higher education as it is about upskilling, digital literacy and the equity of AI access.
Policy debate often frames these pressures in narrowly instrumental terms, urging universities to align more tightly to workforce needs and technological change, often with reductive assumptions about which courses best prepare students for the labour market. Society does need graduates who can contribute quickly and adapt continuously within a changing environment, but when we speak with graduate employers they consistently emphasise that they look for a broader combination of expertise, experience, character and behaviours.
Academic achievement matters, but it is rarely sufficient on its own. Neither, however, is it separate from the capacities employers value most. The analytical, interpretive and critical capabilities developed through academic study form the foundation on which professional judgement, creativity and collaboration are built. Employers are looking for graduates who demonstrate resilience and agility of mind, motivation and initiative, and the emotional intelligence to work constructively with others. AI literacy is increasingly important, but not at the expense of the human qualities that enable graduates to navigate ambiguity through accumulative experience, to exercise judgement, and to build trusted relationships.
The challenge for universities is how deliberately to cultivate and assure learning and development in these human and professional attributes alongside both academic expertise and future skills. This is not a reimagining of what higher education aims to be – it is rare to find a university strategy that does not assert its ambition to develop students who will make a positive difference in the world. The task is instead to recalibrate how we deliberately develop and recognise the full compass of knowledge, skills and character that students acquire through a university education, ensuring that this is explicitly built into curriculum design and the wider student education experience.
Knowledge and beyond
At the University of Birmingham, we have taken a proactive, whole-university approach to preparing graduates for an AI-shaped world. Our human-centred vision for education draws on the Jubilee Centre’s Framework for Character Education in Higher Education and Flourishing Student webinar series, which has brought together institutions from across the world to explore similar questions about the future of learning and graduate capability.
Drawing on the insights of employer partners about how AI is (and isn’t) reshaping their expectations of professional skills and behaviours, we have framed our approach around three interconnected dimensions of learning: Intellectual Curiosity, Future Readiness and Practical Wisdom. Intellectual Curiosity equips students to question, critique and move beyond the outputs of AI systems rather than passively accept them. Future Readiness develops the technical fluency, adaptability and creative confidence needed to work productively with evolving technologies while remaining attentive to their wider social and environmental implications. Practical Wisdom provides the ethical compass that enables graduates to use AI responsibly, recognise its limits and exercise sound judgement where human values, accountability and the common good are at stake.
Together these dimensions define our understanding of the character and capabilities graduates need in an AI-shaped society, including the capacity to contribute responsibly to their communities and to the life of the places in which they study, work and live.
Knowledge in this sense is not simply the accumulation of information but the ability to question assumptions, integrate diverse perspectives, weigh evidence and apply insight with judgement and with care. It involves applying understanding in ways that are socially responsible and publicly engaged, recognising the role that universities and graduates play in strengthening civic life. Building on the Jubilee Centre’s research and leadership in this field, we are placing increasing emphasis on helping students to cultivate this ethical and discerning application of knowledge, through structured experiential and reflective learning. These principles have in turn shaped our thinking about Birmingham’s curriculum and the structure of the student learning journey.
Designing an education that develops knowledge, capability and judgement across the full student experience requires cross-institutional commitment and deliberate curriculum design. The university’s 125th anniversary and reaffirmation of its civic purpose in 2025 provided a timely catalyst for this work. Working with employer partners and professional advisory groups highlighted how a university can support not only academic achievement but also employment readiness, social responsibility and public contribution through a student’s time at university.
Through the Education 125 project, colleagues across the institution developed a shared framework that embeds these attributes throughout the Birmingham degree: integrating rigorous taught study with structured super- and extra-curricular development, encouraging students to engage actively in university life, contribute to local and global communities, and cultivate a sense of belonging and shared responsibility. Central to the framework is ensuring students use AI technically, purposefully and responsibly, through core training, assessment and opportunities for advanced specialisation, alongside deliberate development and demonstration of uniquely human capabilities.
High things
At the core of the new Birmingham curriculum model is the Ad Alta student success pathway (the title is taken from our university motto, per ardua ad alta: “through effort to high things” or, alternatively, “striving for excellence”), a university-wide framework that structures the student degree journey through focused taught modules that provide a scaffold for the development of intellectual curiosity, future readiness and practical wisdom at each stage. Within the next two years, Ad Alta will be the backbone of all of our undergraduate degrees and integral in our approach to postgraduate taught programmes.
In the first year, Discovery modules introduce students to inquiry-led learning while building foundational graduate attributes and reflective practice. This stage deliberately foregrounds intellectual curiosity, helping students to understand how knowledge is created and debated within their discipline. In the second year, the emphasis shifts to Challenge, with experiential learning and collaboration on real-world problems that deepen practical wisdom, teamwork and applied disciplinary knowledge. Students learn to work in teams, share expertise and co-produce solutions. The final year focuses on Creativity/Innovation, as students complete substantial research, design or innovation projects, demonstrating independent judgement, creative and evaluative capability and the confidence to communicate complex ideas.
At postgraduate level, the framework supports research, leadership and global employability pathways aligned to the same principles. Across all stages, the Ad Alta pathway makes explicit the connection between academic learning, professional identity, personal development and social awareness, at the same time as helping students to recognise and articulate how the intellectual foundations of their chosen discipline provide a lens on the world and their life after university. It culminates in the Birmingham Award, which recognises learning, experiences and achievements beyond formal examinations through a structured portfolio of reflection and impact.
This September 2025 around 2000 new first year undergraduate students, on some of the university’s largest teaching programmes and across very different disciplines (Biomedical and Biological Sciences, Computer Science, History, Law and Marketing), started on the Discovery stage of the pathway, with the majority of remaining UG and PGT programmes launching on the pathway by 2027. For each programme the year-long Discovery module includes a common core, integrated with a disciplinary-specific focus, and a common assessment model that includes reflective practice.
Cross-institutional webinars from senior leaders and researchers, along with local alumni and employer panels, support the focus on building intellectual curiosity, practical wisdom, and the professional and personal capabilities that students will need for their future careers. These engagements ensure that employer perspectives inform the learning journey at every stage, helping students understand how the knowledge and approaches they develop in their discipline can be translated into professional contexts.
These opportunities run across the full academic calendar, beginning with Welcome Week activities that introduce students to the university community and its civic partnerships, continuing through term-time programmes and student-led initiatives, and culminating in the Birmingham Summer Term, which gives greater weight to the weeks following formal assessments as a period for academic transition and professional and personal development. The academic component of the Summer Term supports intellectual curiosity and disciplinary identity through super-curricular learning, including fieldwork, academic transition activity, and opportunities to encounter the University’s research culture. Structured professional development activities develop future readiness through employer-led challenge projects, short courses, mini-internships and entrepreneurship experiences, enabling students to apply knowledge and wisdom in practical settings.
Running in parallel, a programme of extra-curricular volunteering, sport, social and cultural activities contributes to community building and engagement, reinforcing the principle that learning extends beyond the classroom. Many of these opportunities involve partnerships with local organisations, charities and community groups, enabling students to contribute to the civic life of Birmingham while developing teamwork, leadership and a sense of public responsibility. This co-curricular dimension allows students to broaden their experience and develop new skills and capabilities without impacting the formal outcome of their degree, encouraging exploration outside of their academic comfort zone. Together, Ad Alta, the Summer Term and the Birmingham Award reinforce the central principle of the Birmingham framework: that curiosity, capability and character are developed across the whole student educational experience. They have been intentionally designed and integrated to support academic success, graduate outcomes and student wellbeing, not as add-ons, but as defining features of a modern civic university.
Flourishing students for a healthy society
Our explicit, planned and reflective approach to curriculum innovation ensures that employability and human flourishing are not competing aims. By integrating academic excellence, skills development and personal growth, we believe universities can prepare graduates not just to get jobs, but to live a good life within and through them, to adapt as roles change, to contribute meaningfully to society, and to live thoughtful, purposeful lives.
Preparing students for a future shaped by artificial intelligence requires more than technical training. Students must learn to use AI tools critically, ethically, and effectively, but they must also cultivate the human capacities that technology can imitate but not truly replicate: thoughtful inquiry, principled judgement, empathy, creativity, and the courage to challenge. While AI can generate information, propose solutions, or analyse patterns, these uniquely human qualities require consciousness, moral awareness, emotional understanding, and intentional agency. If universities focus too narrowly on functional skills and immediate labour-market needs, they risk undermining their distinctive role as incubators of curiosity, discovery, and intellectual formation for the future.
A genuinely future-focused university aligns skills policy with the recognition that flourishing individuals, capable of curiosity, judgement and empathy, are the foundation of both a thriving economy and a healthy society. In an age of AI, our responsibility is not to produce graduates who compete with machines, but individuals who understand how to use them wisely, guided by curiosity, integrity and judgement, and committed to applying their knowledge in service of the wider public good. Our aim is to ensure that this vision is realised by designing an education in which students experience it directly through the ways they learn, collaborate and develop during their time with us.
