ABSTRACT
How easily will universities be able to adapt and how rapidly will a new course be set? The magnitude of the challenges associated with creating the university of the future, based on its current form and traditions, becomes clear when one pays a visit to an American Ivy League university. It is a beautiful day, 28 May 2015, seven o’clock in the morning: Harvard Yard and the whole Harvard University campus is full of chairs. There is room for 37,000 people, and it is hard to imagine that all these chairs will be occupied in the course of the morning. But the first signs that this will happen are already plain to see: in the week before Commencement Day (graduation day), Cambridge becomes busier, boards with slogans such as ‘Congratulations to all our Graduate Students’ appear in the shops and hotels, the hotels are booked up and the somewhat sleepy atmosphere of the town is transformed. There is a palpable sense of excitement, and all kinds of activities are held in the days leading up to Commencement Day.
