Last week I spent time at Victoria University’s new India campus in Delhi, delivering professional learning for colleagues who will be teaching there. While my visit was focused on learning and teaching, being in a new university environment made me think further beyond the purpose of my time there. I began to consider what the university campus of the future could actually look like.
Universities have spent considerable time thinking about how to bring industry into the university. We establish industry advisory groups, develop partnerships, invite guest speakers into our classrooms, create industry projects and send students out on placements. We similarly develop community partnerships and outreach activities designed to bring schools and other community organisations onto our campus.
All of this is valuable, but it rests on the assumption that the university exists here, industry and community exist over there, and our job is to create bridges between them.
What if we thought differently about the university campus from now on? Not simply by locating universities closer to industry or inviting more organisations onto campus, but by creating environments where teaching, learning, research, industry and community are so interwoven that the boundaries between them become increasingly difficult to see.
Perhaps the future campus might not really be a campus at all.
Does a Campus Need to House an Entire University?
When we picture a university campus, many still imagine something substantial. A collection of grand, university-owned brick buildings housing multiple schools and disciplines, libraries, lecture theatres, sporting facilities, cafés and thousands of students. That model has considerable value (and beauty), and it is unlikely to disappear anytime soon. But it need not remain our only understanding of what constitutes a university campus.
A campus no longer necessarily needs to bring most of an institution’s disciplines together in one physical location; in fact, this can sometimes disadvantage some disciplines. A campus in the future could be considerably smaller, focused around a school, disciplinary cluster or particular area of research. Universities might therefore operate through a network of different environments rather than expecting every campus to reproduce the institution as a whole.
A media school might become part of a creative and screen industries ecosystem. A business school could operate within a commercial and entrepreneurial environment, while information technology might become part of a technology and innovation ecosystem. These would not simply be miniature versions of the traditional university campus transplanted into different locations. The opportunity is to create smaller university footprints within much larger shared environments.
This distinction is important. If we simply take university classrooms, academic offices and research spaces and place them in a smaller building within an industry precinct, we have not necessarily created a different model. We may have simply given the traditional campus a different address.
Co-location Is Not Integration
There is a temptation to assume that physical proximity automatically creates collaboration. It does not.
A university can be located next to industry and have very little meaningful interaction with it. It can sit within an industry precinct while operating independently. University staff and industry professionals could even occupy different floors of the same building, use the same entrance and buy coffee from the same café, without their work ever meaningfully intersecting. Being interwoven requires something much more deliberate.
Spaces would need to be designed for interaction rather than simply divided between tenants. Studios, laboratories, technology, meeting areas and collaborative spaces might be shared. Industry practitioners could work alongside academics, researchers and students rather than simply arriving occasionally as guest speakers. University staff might spend part of their time working within industry projects, while practitioners contribute regularly to teaching, mentoring and research.
Research questions could emerge from problems encountered within the ecosystem. Students could contribute to those projects, while research findings could flow back into both professional practice and the curriculum. Community organisations could similarly bring challenges, expertise and perspectives into the environment.
Integration, therefore, is not primarily a question of address. It is a question of how the ecosystem operates.
Imagine a Media Ecosystem
Media provides an interesting way of imagining what this might look like.
Students could create content alongside production companies, broadcasters, digital agencies, independent creators and start-ups. A production facility might simultaneously be a professional workplace, a teaching environment and a research space. An industry practitioner could contribute to a production with students while collaborating with an academic researcher on emerging production technologies.
A community organisation might bring a storytelling challenge into the same environment. That challenge could become a student project, involve professional practitioners, and potentially generate research questions. School students or community groups might come in to create their first podcast, make a short film or experience virtual production, interacting not only with university staff, but with university students and working professionals.
The University of Salford’s presence at MediaCity in Greater Manchester offers a glimpse of some of these possibilities. Its specialist campus sits within a much broader media environment, including organisations such as the BBC, ITV, and hundreds of digital and media businesses. It demonstrates the opportunities created when university learning and research are placed within a significant industry ecosystem. But the idea can be pushed further.
Imagine walking through such an environment and not immediately knowing which studio belongs to the university, which project is an industry project, or which researcher works for which organisation. The aim is not confusion over responsibilities or ownership. Rather, it is an environment designed so that organisational boundaries do not unnecessarily prevent people, knowledge, facilities and ideas from moving between them. Perhaps the precinct itself becomes the campus.
Business and Technology Could Work Differently Too
The same idea becomes particularly interesting when applied to disciplines that do not necessarily require specialist production facilities.
Imagine a business school interwoven with an environment containing established companies, start-ups, entrepreneurs, investors, professional organisations and researchers. Students might move between formal learning and genuine business challenges without these being treated as completely separate parts of their university experience.
An academic might be researching a problem with several organisations while students contribute through a learning project. A start-up could emerge from university research or student work and continue developing within the same environment. Professionals working there could contribute to teaching while continuing their own learning. University researchers might provide expertise to organisations while simultaneously gaining access to emerging questions that require deeper investigation.
Information technology creates similar possibilities. Students studying cybersecurity, data science, or software development could work within an ecosystem of technology companies, start-ups, researchers, government, and community organisations. Industry challenges might generate research questions, research could shape learning, and student projects could contribute to solving real problems. Again, the objective is not simply to put everyone in the same building. It is to weave learning, teaching, research and work together.
Research Cannot Be an Add-On
Research is critical to this idea. If these environments are simply about getting students closer to employers, their potential becomes much narrower and risks reducing higher education to preparation for current jobs.
Universities contribute something different to an industry ecosystem. Researchers can question established practice, investigate emerging challenges and explore possibilities that may not produce immediate commercial returns. Students can encounter that inquiry as part of their learning, while industry and community partners bring different forms of expertise, experience and problems into the research environment.
This creates the possibility of teaching, research and professional practice informing one another continuously. A problem encountered in practice might become a research question. That research might involve students and industry practitioners. Its findings could change professional practice, and subsequently reshape what students learn.
Rather than treating teaching, research and industry engagement as separate university activities, an interwoven environment could allow them to become different parts of the same ecosystem.
The Community Needs to Be Part of It
It is important to note that industry should not dominate this model. If the university’s boundaries become more porous, they should also open to schools and communities.
A media ecosystem could allow school students to create content alongside university students and professionals, rather than simply touring university facilities during an open day. Community organisations could contribute projects and expertise while also gaining access to facilities and university knowledge. A technology ecosystem could bring young people into coding, robotics or emerging technologies while community organisations contribute problems that students, researchers and industry could work together to address.
This creates a more reciprocal relationship. The university is not simply providing something to industry or community, nor are external organisations simply providing opportunities to students. Each becomes a participant in an environment where knowledge, expertise, problems and opportunities move in multiple directions.
The university becomes an anchor within an ecosystem, rather than the owner of everything that happens within it.
What Happens When the Ecosystem Changes?
There are genuine risks in this model. Companies move, industries restructure, technologies change and organisations alter their priorities. A major company might decide it can no longer support students or research, while commercial priorities could potentially influence curriculum or research agendas.
This is why an interwoven campus cannot be built around one company. It needs an ecosystem containing established organisations, small businesses, start-ups, professional bodies, government, community organisations, schools and the university itself. Some participants will leave and others will arrive. The strength of the model should come from the ecosystem, rather than dependence on an individual partner.
Universities would also need to protect their independence. Being interwoven with industry cannot mean becoming subordinate to it. Academic independence and critical inquiry may become even more important when physical and organisational boundaries are less visible. Universities still need to challenge industry practice, pursue research that may be uncomfortable and ensure that students encounter perspectives beyond those of the organisations around them. Being interwoven does not mean being indistinguishable in purpose.
Would It Still Feel Like University?
There is another tension that cannot be ignored. For generations, going to university has carried a particular expectation. Large campuses provide sporting facilities, clubs, societies, cafés, libraries and thousands of other students. They create opportunities to meet people studying disciplines completely unrelated to our own.
Parents may have similar expectations, particularly when their understanding of university is shaped by their own experiences. Institutions themselves have also spent generations associating impressive buildings and large campuses with identity, credibility and prestige.
A smaller university footprint within an industry ecosystem could therefore feel very different. Imagine a prospective media student arriving at a creative industries precinct and asking where the university is, only to discover that they are already standing within it. There may be no grand university entrance and no collection of faculty buildings. Instead, university learning and research spaces are interwoven with production companies, start-ups, community organisations and shared facilities.
For some students that could be exciting; for others, it may not resemble the university experience they imagined. Smaller, specialist environments could provide extraordinary connections to research, industry and community while potentially sacrificing some of the social, cultural and interdisciplinary experiences created by large campuses.
Smaller does not automatically mean better, but neither should we assume that bigger does.
A Campus That Doesn’t Look Like One
This is not an argument for dismantling the campuses universities already have. Large multidisciplinary campuses offer enormous academic, social and cultural value, and many will continue to do so for generations. Nor would the model I have described suit every discipline, institution, location or country. Its potential depends on the ecosystem around it: the industries that are present, the strength of local communities and partnerships, regulatory and educational contexts, student expectations, and the needs of a discipline. What might work for media within an established creative industries precinct, for example, may make little sense in a location without that ecosystem.
The opportunity comes when something new becomes possible. A university may be considering a new campus, expanding into a different region, replacing ageing facilities or establishing a new school. An industry, government or developer may be creating a technology hub, business district, creative precinct or other emerging ecosystem. At these moments, perhaps the default should not always be to give the university its own building and then develop strategies for connecting it to everything around it. Instead, we could ask what it would mean for the university to be part of that ecosystem from the beginning.
That requires more than a university logo on a building within an industry precinct. It requires us to rethink what is shared: spaces and facilities, people and expertise, research questions and projects, teaching and learning experiences, and relationships with schools and communities. Academics, researchers, students, industry professionals and community partners would not simply occupy neighbouring spaces; their work would intentionally intersect.
This may also require us to reconsider what we mean by a campus. It might be smaller than we expect. It might focus on one school or disciplinary area rather than attempting to represent the entire institution. Some spaces might belong to the university, some to industry and some might genuinely be shared. Walking through it, the university’s physical boundaries may not always be obvious, even as its academic independence and purpose remain clear.
My experience in Delhi simply got me thinking about this possibility. Universities have spent decades developing ways to bring industry and community onto campus, and that work remains important. But when the next opportunity to create something new arises, perhaps we should resist automatically rebuilding the physical and organisational boundaries we have inherited.
The question should not simply be: where should we put the university?
Perhaps we should ask: how could the university become part of what is already happening there?
That could mean a smaller university footprint, but a considerably larger learning, research, industry and community ecosystem. This may mean that it does not look much like the campuses universities have built in the past.
And perhaps that is precisely the opportunity.
Reflections
1. Does a university campus need to bring multiple disciplines together in one large physical environment?
2. What would it take for a university to be genuinely interwoven with an industry ecosystem rather than simply located within one?
3. What could be shared across university, industry and community — spaces, staff, research, facilities, projects or something more?
4. How can universities maintain their independence and critical role while becoming more deeply interwoven with industry and community?
5. What might students gain, and lose, if their university experience took place within a smaller university footprint but a much larger professional and community ecosystem?
