Provost Bala's Response to the Committee's Final Report
At this critical moment, Cornell can and should help define a new model for the American university.
In fall 2025, Cornell University Provost Kavita Bala convened the Committee on the Future of the American University to consider the current course and future direction of higher education over the next half century. The committee, composed of 18 faculty drawn from across disciplines, was charged with examining the disruptive forces confronting higher education. They were asked to envision how Cornell should adapt its core missions of undergraduate education, research and scholarship, public impact and community engagement, and graduate and professional education to meet the disruptions of the current moment by looking decades into the future. The charge was deliberately ambitious. They were not asked to defend the university as it is, but to imagine what it could become.
In fall 2026, the committee released the culmination of their work: