For generations, the unit has been the fundamental building block of higher education. It structures curriculum, determines credit, organises teaching, and provides the framework through which students progress towards a qualification. Whether a university teaches in semesters, trimesters, intensive modes, or blocks, the unit remains the common currency of learning. It underpins course design, staff allocation, and quality assurance processes.
Higher education is evolving with more flexible delivery, the rise of lifelong learning, expanding microcredentials and stackable qualifications, and AI transforming the skills graduates need. These changes prompt an important question: as we innovate within the existing framework, should we also reconsider whether the traditional unit is still the best way to structure higher education?
This is not an argument that units should disappear. Rather, it is an invitation to consider whether we have become so accustomed to designing learning around institutional structures that we have stopped asking whether those structures are still the best place to begin.
Students Experience Degrees, Not Units
Most academics are responsible for one or two units within a course. Naturally, our focus is on creating the best possible learning experience within those boundaries. We redesign assessments, refine learning outcomes, update resources, and experiment with different approaches to teaching. These are important, and they have contributed significantly to improving the quality of higher education.
But students experience university in a very different way. They do not see their education as a collection of separate units. Rather, they see it as a cumulative journey influenced by all their experiences during their degree. They handle multiple assessments, adjust to varying expectations, and navigate diverse teaching styles, gradually building the knowledge, skills, and confidence needed for their future careers. Their overall experience depends not only on the quality of individual units but also on how well these units interconnect to create a cohesive course.
This distinction is important because a well-designed unit can still lead to a fragmented student experience. Assessments might unintentionally bunch together, similar types could be repeated without a clear developmental aim, and graduate capabilities might be emphasised in certain areas while overlooked in others. Consequently, students may feel like they are constantly starting over instead of building on the knowledge and skills gained in earlier units.
These challenges rarely arise because individual units are poorly designed. More commonly, they occur because units are developed, reviewed, or modified independently. Over time, well-meaning improvements can slowly undermine the overall coherence of a course. A unit might improve its own learning outcomes but become less aligned with the broader learning path it was meant to serve. The outcome is often a set of strong units that, when combined, do not collaborate as efficiently as possible.
The Risk of Redesigning Units in Isolation
This challenge has grown increasingly significant as higher education adapts to rapid changes. Institutions and educators across the sector are revising assessments, rethinking curriculum, and trying out new teaching methods in response to both the opportunities and challenges of artificial intelligence. Much of this effort is thoughtful and essential. Nevertheless, these changes often happen at the individual unit level instead of being implemented throughout entire courses.
There is a risk that units may start evolving differently. One might implement authentic assessment, another adopt an interactive oral, a third use a portfolio, while others stick to traditional methods. Individually, each choice might be suitable, but together they can lead to an inconsistent student experience if not viewed within the overall course context. Students could face repeated types of assessment, sudden shifts in expectations, workload spikes, or unfamiliar formats, all without enough time to build the necessary knowledge and confidence to succeed.
This challenge extends beyond assessment design. Differences in digital platforms, feedback approaches, expectations for collaboration, the use of artificial intelligence, or even the structure of learning resources can all contribute to a course that feels disconnected from one unit to the next. While some variation is both expected and valuable, unnecessary inconsistency creates additional cognitive load that competes with learning itself.
Curriculum discussions should go beyond individual units. Instead of asking if an assessment or activity fits a single unit, consider how it advances the course’s progression, balance, and overall experience. While innovation is crucial as higher education evolves, it should enhance the cohesion of the student journey, not fragment it.
What if we started somewhere else?
If we were designing a university from the ground up today, without inheriting centuries of educational structures, would we automatically organise learning around discrete units?
Perhaps we would begin instead with the learner’s journey.
Instead of focusing on what belongs in a first-year unit, perhaps we should begin by asking what students need to develop during the early stages of their education. Rather than organising learning around individual subjects, curriculum could be designed around developmental phases that progressively build knowledge, confidence, judgement, professional capability, and identity.
In this model, assessment becomes less about demonstrating achievement at the end of a unit and more about providing evidence of growth across a broader learning journey. Interestingly, this is also consistent with emerging discussions about assessment in the age of artificial intelligence, where increasing emphasis is being placed on collecting evidence of learning over time rather than relying solely on a single point-in-time assessment.
This way of thinking does not necessarily eliminate units. Instead, it changes their role. Units become contributors to a developmental pathway rather than the primary organising principle of curriculum design.
New models of learning are already emerging
Evidence suggests this change is already happening. Microcredentials, professional certificates, short courses, and stackable qualifications offer learners ways to acquire knowledge beyond traditional degrees. More individuals are engaging in ongoing higher education throughout their careers, blending learning from universities, industry, professional groups, and employers. The line between formal education and professional development is gradually blurring.
Artificial intelligence introduces a new aspect to this debate. With information now more accessible, the unique value of higher education shifts from merely imparting knowledge to fostering skills such as judgment, creativity, collaboration, ethical reasoning, communication, and the capacity to apply knowledge in complex contexts. These skills are rarely developed within a single course; instead, they develop through deliberate experiences that accumulate gradually over time.
Maybe curriculum design should focus more on progression than on content. Instead of questioning what students need to learn this semester, we could ask who they should become by this point in their learning path.
Designing the future of higher education
Curriculum mapping has prompted universities to look beyond individual units, focusing on assessment, graduate skills, and course scaffolding. These discussions are important because they acknowledge that students engage with degrees as a whole, rather than through separate subjects. Yet, the future of curriculum design might involve moving past the degree framework altogether.
As higher education adapts to evolving learner expectations, including flexible study options, lifelong learning, and swift technological advances, we have a chance to reevaluate some of our long-held assumptions. The key question isn’t whether units have effectively supported higher education—they clearly have—but whether they should remain the main framework for designing learning in the coming decades.
Maybe the future of curriculum design lies in creating better learning journeys rather than just better units. If so, the key question for higher education shifts from improving individual units to shaping coherent developmental experiences that equip learners for lifelong change.
The unit has long served as the fundamental element of higher education. However, the subsequent building block might not be a traditional unit.
Reflection Questions
- When you design or redesign a unit, how often do you consider its place in the broader student journey?
- If you mapped out your entire course, would you see a clear intentional progression or just a series of well-designed but separate units?
- How are assessment, graduate capabilities, and learning experiences scaffolded across your course rather than within a single unit?
- As your institution redesigns assessment in response to artificial intelligence, are these conversations taking place at the unit level, the course level, or both?
- If you were designing higher education from the ground up today, would the unit still be the fundamental building block, or would you start with the learner’s journey?
- How might lifelong learning, microcredentials, flexible pathways, and artificial intelligence reshape how we organise the curriculum over the next decade?
- What should be the next building block of higher education?