Universities as a Fourth Pillar of Society

Beyond educating students and producing research, universities hold a unique role in society: shaping future leaders, fueling intergenerational prosperity, and contributing knowledge and solutions no other institution can provide. Vice Chair & Managing Director Minu Ipe frames universities as the “fourth pillar” alongside government, business, and civic society — essential actors in addressing global challenges and ensuring humanity’s collective future.

So let's think about what universities have been doing for society for hundreds of years. Right. That essentially began with the mission of educating some subset of people. That was an important contribution. Then some subset of universities expanded to do research and contributed in that way. Very important contributions, but largely stopped there. There was always this sense that universities are somewhat removed from society's everyday problems, manifest in the town and gown.

Kind of an approach, right? We are over here with our mission while society around us is doing different things. What we're seeing is, as the needs of society have evolved, the tools, the technologies available in our societies have evolved, but universities have largely stayed where they were protected in some ways because nobody else did what universities did.

But again, the point is not that what universities are doing is unimportant, it's just that it's not kept up with the times. And so when we step back today, we at the University Design Institute are really powered by the idea that universities are a fourth pillar of society, with government, with the business sector, with civic society, that these components have to work together for societies to evolve for us all collectively to have a better future.

None of these pillars can individually solve the gamut of problems that we have. And so it's an opportunity for universities to lean in and say we are part of society. We have some responsibilities that we can uniquely fulfill. And there are things that universities can do that no other institution and society can do. Right. The importance of that teaching mission and shaping that next generation of leaders of our society, whether in the political realm, in the business realm and the civic realm, the talents of our populations.

And then, uniquely, I can't think of another institution that carries with it the dreams and hopes of individuals and families that contributes to intergenerational prosperity the way universities do. So the universities have this amazing and unique role in society today. The role is being questioned. The relevance of universities are being questioned in some parts of the world because we've just not moved fast enough.

So fundamentally, the thing that we are capable of doing is good. It just needs to expand. And so when we say expand, how do we think about expanding and the expansion that we really believe is important is to say, okay, let's look at the needs of our communities, let's look at the needs of our society and say, how can we bring the entirety of our capabilities in the learning and teaching realm, in the knowledge generation realm, and in all of the other expertise that we have?

How can we organize ourselves to really power up our communities, our societies, and the world as a whole? And so the mission may have always been there, but universities were somewhat protected from addressing that in the past. But we are now in a space where we don't have the luxury of not looking there. Society is demanding that we step up and do more, and universities can and know how to do this right.

We are institutions of learning, so we should be taking the lead in reimagining and redesigning and rebuilding ourselves to have the impact that we want to have to power the dreams of our people and our families, and really ensure that humanity has a shot at living prosperous, healthy lives, while we also take care of the needs of the rest of the planet.

So I think it is a moment where we have the opportunity to step up and show our communities and our partners what we are capable of doing, and that's the excitement of the work that we do at the University Design Institute, is to partner with universities who want to take that leap, or who want to expand on the work that they're doing, who really want to create the change that all of us want to see.