Education for human flourishing in the age of AI

The skills agenda remains an important factor for universities and students. Where have those skills changed, and how is your university leading the conversation?

The biggest change is that employability can no longer be reduced to disciplinary competence. A graduate might be technically excellent and still be poorly prepared for a world in which knowledge changes rapidly, AI can perform increasingly complex tasks, careers are less linear and people are expected to work within cultures, disciplines and technologies. The skills agenda has therefore moved toward a combination of critical thinking, communication, collaboration, problem-solving, creativity, ethical judgment, adaptability, intercultural competence, digital and AI literacy and responsible citizenship. Even in our earlier academic reforms, we had already started redesigning learning outcomes around communication, collaboration, problem-solving, social and cultural competence, creativity and critical thinking.

At UA, we are now pushing this further in three ways.

First, we are working toward a clearer set of UA Graduate Attributes: qualities that should characterize an Antonine graduate regardless of whether that student studied engineering, business, health, communication, sports, music or theology. That allows skills to become part of our educational identity rather than a list attached to individual programs. UA Plus gives this broader conception of the graduate a concrete expression. It engages students in eight dimensions of well-being and personal development: emotional, physical, social, intellectual, spiritual, occupational, financial and environmental, and connects these dimensions with community engagement.

Second, we are treating AI literacy as more than learning how to use tools. Students need to know when to use AI, when not to use it, how to interrogate its output, how to preserve intellectual independence and how to understand the ethical consequences of technology. The question is not whether our graduates can work with AI. It is whether they can remain intellectually responsible when working with it.

Third, we are bringing learning closer to practice through internships, international exposure, experiential learning, partnerships, future-focused continuing education and increasingly, environments in which students interact with professionals and real societal challenges.

For us, the future skills agenda is tied to combining human judgment with technological capability.

What is a challenge in your region that universities alone cannot solve, and what are the key areas in which partnerships can help?

One of the major challenges in our region is the widening distance between the scale of our social and economic challenges and the capacity of any single institution to respond to them.

Universities can educate, conduct research and generate ideas, but they cannot, on their own, create functioning labor markets, retain talent, reform public systems, solve environmental problems or generate sustainable economic opportunity. The issues are interconnected, so the response has to be as well.

That is where partnerships become essential. Universities need industry to help anticipate the transformation of professions and translate knowledge into practice; public authorities to connect research with policy and local and regional priorities; NGOs and civil society to bring universities closer to communities and their needs; international universities to expand research capacity and academic mobility; and the Lebanese diaspora to provide expertise, networks and opportunities that would be difficult to reproduce locally.

Our own approach to research has increasingly been framed as research conducted with society and for society, with attention to local and regional needs and to the societal impact of what we produce.

We think the most productive partnerships are no longer those in which a university signs an agreement and then looks for an activity. They start with a shared problem and ask what each partner can contribute that the others cannot.

Where are the greatest opportunities for universities in the Arab region, and how can institutions take advantage of them?

The region is experiencing major economic transitions, technological acceleration, changing professions and growing demand for more flexible forms of learning. Universities can respond by moving beyond the traditional degree model: creating interdisciplinary programs around emerging fields, offering shorter and stackable learning pathways, strengthening lifelong education, and building much closer relationships with employers, entrepreneurs, public institutions, and industry. There is also considerable room for universities to work together through joint degrees, shared research platforms, mobility and programs that give students access to a wider regional academic ecosystem rather than confining their experience to one institution.

Another major opportunity is for universities to become much more directly connected to the transformation of the societies around them. Issues such as water, energy, health, sustainability, urban development, cultural heritage, economic resilience and technological change are immediate regional realities and can become the basis for distinctive research, innovation and experiential learning. Instead of importing solutions and educational models developed for different contexts, Arab universities can generate knowledge from the region, test solutions with communities and industry and translate research into visible economic and social value. For Antonine University, this is precisely why we are placing increasing emphasis on interdisciplinary and contextualised research, living-lab approaches, flexible education, responsible AI and stronger collaboration within the Middle East and Euro-Mediterranean space. The opportunity is not to reproduce what successful universities elsewhere have done, but to define what a successful university from this region, for this region and connected to the world should look like.

If you could set the direction for all of higher education, what is the one area toward which you would direct the sector?

I would direct higher education toward human development in the age of artificial intelligence.

We are entering a period in which universities will have access to extraordinary technological capacity. The danger is that we allow the technology to define the educational objective. It should be the opposite.

The fundamental question should remain: What type of person should leave a university after three, four or five years?

A university graduate should certainly know more and be able to do more. But that graduate should also be able to think independently, exercise judgment, distinguish information from knowledge, work with people who are different from them, act ethically, adapt to change, contribute to society and continue learning long after graduation.

That is why we would resist the idea that universities must choose between equipping students with the capabilities demanded by a changing world and preserving the broader human purpose of education. We need both. What will continue to change is the nature of work, the technologies we use and even many of the professions we prepare students for. What should not become equally provisional are the values by which we decide how those changes are used. Universities still have a responsibility to form people capable of directing progress toward human dignity, responsibility and the good of society.

For us, the central responsibility is not simply to prepare people for the future of work, but to prepare people capable of influencing what that future becomes.