Critical Faculty

Melanie Woodin is a renowned neuroscientist, a diehard cyclist and now U of T's first woman president. What took so long?

- COURTNEY SHEA

Here's a question more and more people are asking in 2025: What is the point of going to university?

What we offer at the University of Toronto is an academically rigorous degree. If you want to work in advanced technologies or write about the future of democracy, for example, then U of T is where you should be. University is where you learn how to think critically, to consider ethics, to get disciplinary knowledge. It's where young people figure out who they are.

But what about their careers? Thanks to the AI revolution, it's not clear what jobs will even exist in 10 years.

In many ways, U of T is considered the birthplace of AI, so we're constantly talking about its implications. When you've been in education for a while, you get used to change. I remember when students started bringing devices to class to record lectures and presentations, which was super contentious at the time. My feeling is that, if you're here to learn, you should have all of the tools available. U of T needs to be a leader in the responsible adoption of AI, which can allow us to focus on the things that are uniquely human.

In your first address as president, you talked about your goal to bolster faith in higher education. What happened to that faith in the first place?