A possible renaissance for Christian higher education

The early Greeks saw the essence of education as Paideia: the process of forming a whole person into an ideal citizen. They emphasized the formation of virtues like prudence, justice, fortitude and temperance in preparation for active citizenship. Later, in the Medieval era, the Christian tradition saw education as formation for the glory of God, adding Christian virtues of faith, hope and love along with character traits like humility, gratitude, generosity and chastity. But something shifted after the Enlightenment and Industrial Revolution. Knowledge became increasingly instrumental, valued for its practical application primarily as information needed to “get a job.” I suspect that the ongoing advances in artificial intelligence (AI) will expose the limited value of a strictly utilitarian education. It turns out, many technical and practical skills are likely to be displaced by AI. AI is disrupting the labour landscape, and the jobs people train for today may no longer exist in the not-so-distant future.

Some schools are responding by doubling down on teaching AI, but the AI of tomorrow will not be the AI of today. Large Language Models (LLMs) like ChatGPT will give way to new AI architectures with different strengths and weaknesses. Gazing up at my office bookshelf (where I sentimentally store some of my undergraduate textbooks) reminds me of how certain technical knowledge is time-bound.

Human-centred

My hope is that we are standing on the threshold of a renaissance that recovers what education ought to be: the formation of a person. This formation is not something that will become obsolete or fall out of fashion. A formative education can equip someone with the character they will need to flourish amid future change: contentment amid upheaval, courage in the face of change, hope amid uncertainty, wisdom to navigate new paths, justice to do what is right in every new situations, temperance to maintain self-control, faith in an unchanging God, and a hope that God guides and holds the future in his hands. Most Christian colleges are already ahead of the game when it comes to character formation. Residential, liberal arts, Christian universities with robust co-curricular and campus life programs are a many-splendoured thing – quite distinct from large technical universities. A good slogan for recruiting in this era will be less about skills to be “future ready” but rather “What kind of person do you want to become?” Or perhaps, to put it more directly, “Why limit your education to garnering skills that AI will eventually learn, when you can become a person that AI could never be?”

Skill and virtue

As an engineer, I don’t want to dismiss applied skills – a liberal arts, faith-based education does not exclude vibrant professional programs. Frankly, practical skills and professional programs open up concrete ways to love our neighbour. Author Wendell Berry notes, “How can you love your neighbour if you don’t know how to build or mend a fence . . . . How will you practice virtue without skill?” But in an age of AI, practical skills on their own will be insufficient, whereas virtue and character can endure.

Paul makes a similar point about the importance of godliness in comparison to physical training when he writes to Timothy: “For physical training is of some value, but godliness has value for all things, holding promise for both the present life and the life to come” (1 Tim. 4:8).

My hope is that Christian colleges and universities will double down on their mission, offering a timeless and distinct education in an age of AI-driven uncertainty.