Rethinking Higher Education in the Age of Embodied AI: From Techne to Phronesis and an Institutional Transformation Roadmap

Ozturkoglu, Omer (2026) Rethinking Higher Education in the Age of Embodied AI: From Techne to Phronesis and an Institutional Transformation Roadmap. Working Paper. SSRN.

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Abstract

This paper was triggered by the question "Can universities survive artificial intelligence (AI)?" posed in a conference and argues that this question is already outdated. I noticed that when educators and institutions debate AI, they remain trapped in a narrow, screen-bound imagination focused merely on LLM-based chatbots. Evaluated through a Deweyan pragmatic lens, this study critically examines how decades of neoliberal marketisation, customeroriented audit cultures, and administrative risk avoidance have adversely affected the relational core of university teaching. Furthermore, expanding this pragmatic inquiry into evidence-grounded thought experiments, the paper details how Embodied (physical) AI tutors could fundamentally alter classroom delivery, continuous process-folio assessments, and 24/7 personal tutoring, while outlining the radical scenario of a "Big Tech University" established by unprecedented corporate computational, workforce and financial resources. The paper discusses that universities, which solely focus on transactional job-market training, will inevitably lose competition against the prospective Big Tech University. Therefore, it concludes that higher education must reclaim its foundational mission: cultivating the practical wisdom, moral judgment, and civic character through relational human interactions. Additionally, the study proposes a four-phase, stage-gated institutional roadmap-developing AI tutors and course assistance tools powered by locally hosted Small Language Models, collaborative robotic education, strategic inter-university consortia and total cultural transformation.

Item Type:	Monograph (Working Paper)
Dates:	Date Event 23 September 2026 Published Online
Subjects:	CAH17 - business and management > CAH17-01 - business and management > CAH17-01-04 - management studies
Divisions:	Business School > Management, Business and Marketing
Depositing User:	Gemma Tonks
Date Deposited:	23 Oct 2026 12:34
Last Modified:	23 Oct 2026 12:34
URI:	https://www.open-access.bcu.ac.uk/id/eprint/17284

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