Marek Tamm: What Would Happen If There Were No Universities?
In an opinion piece published by Estonia's ERR portal, Marek Tamm examines the role of universities in society. He argues that they allow society to tackle questions whose practical value is not known in advance.
A piece by Marek Tamm has been published on the Russian-language portal of ERR, Estonia's public broadcaster. In it, the author asks readers to imagine waking up in Estonia with no universities left. He suggests treating this thought experiment not as a list of things that would be lost, but as a way to understand the place of universities in society.
Organised improbability
Tamm notes that society usually asks what it expects from universities: which specialists to train and which problems to solve. These questions assume that future needs are already known, which they are not. He defines a university as "organised improbability": it gives people time and resources to study questions that have no answers yet, often without knowing their practical value. As an example, he mentions mathematicians who spent centuries studying the properties of numbers without foreseeing their importance for modern cryptography and cybersecurity.
The ability to know, to do and to imagine
Tamm sums up the contribution of universities through three abilities: to know, to do and to imagine. The first includes telling proven knowledge from unfounded opinion. The second means training doctors, teachers, engineers, lawyers and other professionals. The third is the ability to ask whether the right questions are being posed. He considers universities in a small country such as Estonia part of its intellectual independence, noting that the Estonian language will not survive as a language of science and higher education on its own.
Impact cannot be reduced to metrics
Tamm accepts that universities must account for their use of public funds, but warns against treating only measurable impact as valuable. If funding for a project requires its benefit to be described precisely in advance, preference goes to what is already familiar.
He also addresses artificial intelligence: merely passing on information no longer justifies a university's existence, so the skill of judging answers and taking responsibility for how knowledge is used becomes more important. The author concludes that the aim of university education is not only to adapt people to the future, but to give them the knowledge and courage to help shape it.
