From Scarcity to Abundance: Will Universities Survive the Age of AI? By Richard Sebaggala

For centuries, higher education benefited from the scarcity of knowledge. Universities held the key to specialised information, and society paid a high price for the degrees and expertise that only these institutions could provide. Professors were the guardians of wisdom, lecture theatres the places where it was passed on, and libraries the guarded vaults of human progress. From an economic perspective, this was a textbook case of supply and demand: the supply of advanced knowledge was low, the demand from individuals and employers was high, and universities could command both prestige and price. Degrees acted as economic signals for scarce intellectual capital. This monopoly has disappeared.

Artificial intelligence now produces literature reviews in seconds, explains complex theories on demand, and even designs experiments or business strategies that used to be hidden in the minds of experts. The supply curve of knowledge has shifted dramatically outwards, reducing scarcity and lowering the "price" of access to information to almost zero. Knowledge is no longer scarce. What is scarce is the ability to integrate, apply, and scrutinise AI-produced knowledge. In economic terms, the new scarce commodity is interpretability; the human ability to assess, contextualise, and create value from a wealth of data. The survival of universities will depend not on guarding data, but on how well they manage to integrate AI into teaching, research, and public engagement; and that means faculty must lead the way.

Click the following link to access the full article on Richard's blog https://mythinklikeeconomist.blogspot.com/2025/08/from-scarcity-to-abundance-will.html?m=1