How to fix America's universities: a radical proposal for a state-funded experimental autonomous research university

The Neo-Humboldtian University: A Blueprint for Renewal

Introduction

America’s universities are collapsing under bureaucracy, politicization, and loss of purpose. The world’s most productive research system once emerged from a similar crisis: 19th-century Germany. We can do it again.

At its scientific peak in the late 19th century, despite being 3% of the world’s population, Germany produced 50% of its scientific papers, 1/3 of Nobel Prizes, and founded every major modern scientific field and institution type used in modern science.

The seminar, the research laboratory, the Ph.D., tenure, and most foundational modern scientific methodological approaches were developed in the 19th century under the German system.

A proposal: an autonomous experimental neo-Humboldtian research university

My growing conviction is that, to address the crisis of legitimacy and dysfunction in America’s universities, America should prototype experimental universities along the same NEO-HUMBOLDTIAN lines.

I believe it is not enough to reform the universities.

Decades of corruption, sclerosis, and bureaucracy make turning the ship around quickly almost impossible. We don’t have time, and the administrators will not cooperate even if we did.

It will take decades to reform America’s universities, and the student quality from our best institutions is at an all-time low.

We need something new now.

In other words, the strategy: reform the existing universities from the top--as Trump is doing--while also producing pressure from the bottom through radical innovation rooted in the past--which is what this proposal would do.

Revive the spirit and principles; keep only the innovations that work; discard the rest

Currently, American research universities have greatly degenerated to precisely the opposite of the original Humboldtian model. They are universities in the Humboldtian image without its soul--stuck mimicking a system that is a century outdated in a large number of ways.

Just look at medical education--founded, correctly, on the Humboldtian model imported through Hopkins and then through the Flexner report, but now a century outdated.

Thus, the point is not to rehash the innovations or systems of the Humboldtian system, but to revive its spirit of innovation itself in a prototype form.

This is, by the way, exactly how the original Humboldtian system was founded--as a prototype in 1910 in Berlin, that then because of its successes spread like wildfire through Prussia then throughout the world.

AI engineering meets education in the 21st century

To do this, we should be tech-forward: update existing institutional models not by layering new technologies over them, but by reimagining all of education from the ground up in a tight-knit, small-scale, closed university run entirely by the scholars and scientists--and a cadre of cutting edge AI and engineering faculty.

Constitutional carve-out and scientific funding reform

To do replicate the Humboldtian model in 21st century America, a constitutional statutory carve-out for an autonomous experimental university would need to be made by Congress. This is the only way such an experimental university might be possible, for reasons that will become obvious in a moment.

There are many more details.

To take just one example, scientific funding requires radical reform to eliminate the problem of the research precariat--which severely degrades scientific quality--with hard money and funding passed as a block to the institution, with allocations happening not at the federal but by the institute director at the institute level. (This was also how the Humboldtian system worked, as well as many of the other famously productive corporate and state research systems.)

And much more, including safeguards and guardrails that are of especial importance for maintaining autonomy in a modern American democracy in the age of the Internet.

Ten principles

A full discussion of this will come later--here, on my website, and in my book. So consider this an introduction.

For now, here are ten ways that American universities fall short of Humboldtian principles--and ways that a proposed experimental, autonomous university based on Humboldtian principles would be radically different.

I. Purpose of the University

Modern American university: The university exists for credentialing, revenue, and compliance. Learning is justified by “career outcomes,” “diversity metrics,” or “return on investment.” The idea of truth is replaced by “impact,” “relevance,” and “equity.”

Humboldtian Principle: The university exists for truth-seeking and human formation (Bildung). Knowledge is pursued for its own sake because truth ennobles both the individual and the nation. Credentials are not sought for their own sake, but the world’s most elite professionals and civil servants will nonetheless be produced as a byproduct.

II. Relation Between Teaching and Research

Modern American university: Teaching and research are administratively separated. Teaching is outsourced to adjuncts and graduate students; research is bureaucratized into grant cycles, metrics, and compliance regimes. Discovery and education now live in different silos.

Humboldtian Principle: Teaching is research. Professors think with students in real time. Inquiry and instruction are one continuous act. Knowledge is not closed, but open. Answers are not sought, but questions.

III. Freedom

Modern American university: Freedom is replaced by governance. Professors operate under HR policy, DEI review, and risk management. Students follow mandated curricula. The ideal of liberty yields to “safe learning environments.”

Humboldtian Principle:
Two freedoms define the university’s soul:
Lehrfreiheit: freedom of professors to teach and investigate without constraint.
Lernfreiheit: freedom of students to choose teachers and shape their intellectual path.

IV. Structure of Authority

Modern American university: Universities are ruled by administrative bureaucracies: compliance officers, diversity deans, general counsels, and communications staff. The ratio of administrators to faculty exceeds 1:1 at many institutions.

Humboldtian Principle: Scholars govern themselves through peer review and intellectual merit. Quality is guaranteed by direct oversight by the faculty. Standards for graduation and promotion are exacting, intense, exclusive. The state provides funds, not directives.

V. Epistemology: What Counts as Knowledge

Modern American university: Knowledge is increasingly subordinated to politics, marketability, or identity. “Research excellence” is measured by citation indices, funding levels, or social alignment, not intellectual rigor.

Humboldtian Principle: Wissenschaft: disciplined inquiry in any field, whether natural or human. All truth-seeking bound by method, not ideology.

VI. The Scholar’s Vocation

Modern American university: Academia is a career industry. Scholars are entrepreneurs of reputation, navigating metrics, branding, and institutional politics. The vocation becomes performative rather than contemplative.

Humboldtian Principle: Scholarship is a moral calling: a life of disciplined inquiry, patience, and devotion to truth.

VII. The Student’s Role

Modern American university: The student is a customer. Learning is an entitlement; intellectual discomfort is a customer service failure. Education is consumption.

Humboldtian Principle: The student is an apprentice investigator, learning the methods of truth, shaping mind and soul, morally and intellectually.

VIII. The State’s Role

Modern American university: The state funds higher education as workforce training and social management. Universities are instruments of policy, regulation, and cultural messaging.

Humboldtian Principle: The state guarantees independence. It funds scholarship to secure truth, not ideology. Paradoxically, through its independence, its fruits strengthen American national power.

IX. Institutional Ethos

Modern American university: Rule proliferation, low trust, and procedural control. The university is a compliance apparatus built atop a hedge fund, spiraling morale up by public relations professionals, with classrooms attached.

Humboldtian Principle: Few rules, high trust, and personal accountability. The university is a community of free minds.

X. Outcome

Modern American university: A self-replicating engine of an endlessly expanding administration: compliance units, risk offices, DEI bureaucracies, Title IX departments. It produces managers of optics and virtue signals rather than discoverers of truth.

Humboldtian System: A self-replicating engine of discovery: the laboratory, the seminar, the Ph.D., the scientific institute. It gave the world the modern research university. It’s time to revive it—and give it a 21st century upgrade.

Wrapping up

In the coming posts on this topic, I’ll outline the full story of the origins of the Humboldtian model, how it achieved such extraordinary successes the core features it shares in common with other famously productive models, how 21st-century American neo-Humboldtian prototype could actually be built, and how the prototype, and, if successful, its daughter institutions, could coexist with other research university institutions in the United States and how these and K-12 institutions could be reformed to complement it.