ABSTRACT
The university in its classical form will undoubtedly change rapidly into a flexible organization that creates and transfers a great deal of digital knowledge. What is more, the university will cease to exist: a greater diversity of specialized universities will emerge, varying from the teaching university to smaller niche universities that specialize in agriculture, technology or medicine. The comprehensive research university will encounter difficulties in this respect precisely because of its breadth, to which much importance has traditionally been attached. Breadth offers many opportunities for innovation and combining research, and it is also attractive for students, due to the wide range of teaching options from which they can choose. But at the same time, it is an almost impossible to excel across a whole range of disciplines and to compete with smaller, more specialized universities. Combining teaching and research over this whole range of fields will also constitute a major challenge, even though this was what lay at the core of Van Humboldt’s message: namely, the ongoing training of young people in innovative research during their university education.
