Why the Role of Teachers and Universities Is Shifting—and What Parents Need to Know
The professor standing at the front of the room didn’t look like a lecturer. She had her back to the slides, hands in her pockets, and she was asking the group of eighteen-year-olds a question that none of the parents in the audience had ever been asked during a university open house. “If you can find the answer to any question in two seconds on your phone,” she said, “what do you actually need me for?”
A kid in the front row shrugged. Another one laughed nervously. I glanced at my daughter, who was scribbling something in the handout—probably drawing a flower in the margins, knowing her. And I realized I didn’t have a good answer. Neither did the professor, it seemed, because she just nodded and said, “Good. Sit with that for a minute.”
For the next twenty minutes, she didn’t talk about her discipline at all. She talked about how her students had access to more information in a single semester than she had in her entire graduate career. She talked about a project where her students had to design a water filtration system using only materials from a hardware store. She mentioned something called “ungrading,” where students evaluate their own work against clear criteria. I caught myself gripping the edge of the plastic chair, trying to remember if I had ever turned in a self-assessed paper in my life.
My own university experience was mostly about attending lectures and taking notes. I had professors who were brilliant people, but their main job seemed to be transferring what they knew into my notebook. I’d go home, memorize dental formulas or economic theories, and then forget most of it after the exam. I don’t say that with bitterness—it worked for the world I was entering. The lecture hall was a fair model for a workplace where you were paid to follow instructions and meet deadlines. But sitting in that open house, I realized my daughter is preparing for a different kind of world. One where facts are free, and the real skill is knowing which facts matter and how to use them.
Later, I walked over to the education building to meet a friend who teaches high school English. She had just come from a meeting with her department head, and she looked the way you do after a long conversation about something you love and also want to set on fire. We found a bench near a fountain, and I asked her the same question the professor had asked the students: what are you actually for?
“That’s the thing,” she said, peeling the label off a water bottle. “I used to know. I taught them how to write a five-paragraph essay. I taught them the difference between a metaphor and a simile. Now they can ask AI for a definition in three seconds. They can generate a perfectly structured essay in two. So if that’s all I’m doing, I’m obsolete.”
She leaned back. “But what I do now is teach them how to read what the AI gives them. How to ask it better questions. How to tell when the metaphor is doing actual work or just decorating a sentence. I feel more like a coach than a lecturer. It’s exhausting, but it’s also the first time I’ve felt like I’m teaching the whole person.”
I thought about my daughter again. She’s a decent student, but she’s not naturally organized. She loses assignments. She forgets to check her email. Last week, she spent an hour arguing with a chatbot about a history question and then told me, “It keeps saying the same thing, but I think it’s wrong.” She didn’t need someone to tell her the right answer. She needed to practice the discomfort of being uncertain, of pushing back, of demanding better evidence. A lecture wouldn’t give her that.
The role of teachers has been shifting for a while, but the shift has become impossible to ignore. In universities, professors are increasingly expected to be mentors, curriculum designers, and even psychological first responders. A colleague of mine who teaches introductory biology told me he spends more time helping first-years cope with homesickness and burnout than he does explaining mitosis. He’s not complaining. But he’s pointing out that the classroom has become a place where students practice uncertainty—not just academic uncertainty, but the uncertainty of living on their own for the first time.
What does that mean for parents? I think it means we have to adjust our own expectations. We grew up with a model that said teachers deliver knowledge, students receive it, and grades measure how well you received it. That model doesn’t hold. A university or school that simply hands out information is no longer offering something you can’t get free from your phone. What it can offer is a structure for learning how to live with questions.
I’ve started asking my daughter different things when she comes home from school. Instead of “What did you learn today?” I ask, “What made you change your mind about something?” Instead of “Did you finish your homework?” I ask, “What’s something you’re still confused about?” She thinks I’m being weird, but sometimes she gives me a real answer. Last week she said, “We had a debate about whether a city should build a new stadium or a new library, and I was on the stadium side, and then someone made a good point and I switched.” That’s the kind of thinking universities need to keep up with. Teachers can’t make that happen by standing at a whiteboard. They have to create the conditions.
The practical part is messier than it sounds. Teachers who want to shift their classrooms toward this coaching model often hit walls. Standardized tests still exist. Parents still ask about grades. Universities still have admissions criteria. My friend the English teacher said she spends hours designing “messy” assignments where there’s no single right answer, only to receive emails from parents asking why there’s no rubric. She’s had to explain that a rubric for creativity sometimes defeats the point.
I don’t have a neat conclusion. The professor we met at the open house didn’t either. She ended her presentation by saying, “I can’t tell you what your future will look like because it doesn’t exist yet. But I can help you practice being okay with not knowing.” My daughter seems okay with that. She’s actually a little relieved, because she’s never been great at memorizing things. She’s better at asking follow-up questions and poking at assumptions. That used to be seen as a distraction in class. Now it might be the most useful skill she has.
As we walked back to the car, she said, “That professor was kind of cool, right?” I nodded. I thought about my old professors, the ones with the overhead projectors and the piles of graded essays. They were good at something, but it’s not the same something my daughter needs. The role of universities and teachers today isn’t clearer than it used to be. It’s just more honest. We used to pretend that knowledge was scarce, and they were the gatekeepers. Now knowledge is everywhere, and their job is to help kids learn how to not drown in it.
I still don’t know what to tell her when she asks why college costs so much and whether it’s worth it. The professor didn’t know either. But she did say that the purpose of higher education has never been just the information—it’s the proximity to people who ask better questions than you do. That’s something, even if the questions don’t come with answer keys.
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