2023 marks the sesquicentennial—the 150th anniversary—for Vanderbilt University.
The private college based in Nashville is riding high, according to its chancellor, Daniel Diermeier, who says last year was Vanderbilt’s “best year in our history.” He cites metrics like student demand, faculty research grant performance, and campus fundraising.
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But now in his fourth year as leader of the university, one of Diermeier’s core passions is ensuring students and faculty have open spaces to discuss and debate without fear of retribution. He can be found talking about free speech at great length all around—on campus, in various news outlet op-eds, at conferences, and even in commencement addresses.
This hyperfocus is grounded in the very mission of the university, he says.
“Our paramount vision is to provide a transformative education and path breaking research,” Diermeier tells Fortune. “And we believe that free speech and free expression is really essential for that. Because if you cannot engage in free debate on the most challenging issues, it’s impossible to have a transformative education and really path breaking research.”
Along with free speech, other challenges like AI and even addressing college rankings also appear to be some of the biggest thorns for higher education institutions moving forward.
Worried about rankings
Vanderbilt made headlines last week for its denouncement of the 2024 best college rankings by U.S. News and World Report, with the university falling from No. 13 to No. 18. Fortune Education does not rank universities as a whole.
Diermeier and the school’s provost were quick to blast the rankings and expressed their disappointment in what they called was a “lack of rigor and competence” by the outlet. Their words were sent to students, faculty and alumni according to the Vanderbilt Hustler, the school’s student newspaper.
Diermeier tells Fortune that there is an increasing amount of criticism of both public and private universities in the US.
“Some of it, I think, is important,” he says. “A lot of it is totally misguided.”
The school took issue with the new, refined rankings methodology that in part removed factors such as number of faculty with terminal degrees and incoming students’ high school class standing. Factors such as social mobility and borrower debt were given increased emphasis. Overall, the Vanderbilt leaders claimed the rankings were made with “incomplete and misleading data.”
The university meets 100% of student’s demonstrated financial need, without loans, according to its financial aid office. Diermeier says this adds up to a quarter of a billion dollars each year toward financial aid for students.
“The commitment to making this accessible is almost entirely ignored. So people say, you know, we’re bastion for privilege. Well, what oligarchy would spend (roughly) $244 million to give access to people?” he tells Fortune. “It’s a worrisome position.”
Other private schools like Wake Forest and Washington University in St. Louis experienced lower rankings this year as well. Columbia University notably decided to not participate after its sharp fall in the 2022 rankings.
Vanderbilt’s stated goal is to “become one of the top ten research and teaching universities in America.”
Diermeier’s fear is that in the future, universities may be damaged.
“We have to watch out that with all the legitimate debates about education, and what it means—that we’re not destroying unintentionally these great universities because the social benefit that they have in terms of transforming student lives and research impact, which is tremendous,” he says.
Welcoming expression on a private campus
Vanderbilt has fielded various concerns about students feeling that they cannot speak freely on campus, according to the chancellor, and staff have been correspondingly encouraged to restrain themselves from taking policy positions. But, Diermeier notes student fear often goes beyond the classroom—originating instead from peer ostracization or attacks on social media.
Private universities by nature have the ability to limit free speech more than their publicly funded counterparts. But at Vanderbilt, it is believed that free expression is quintessential to the purpose of any university.
The school’s approach centers around three components: free speech, principle neutrality, and civil discourse.
“It’s really important that we give our students in particular the tools to engage in civil discourse. And that is something I think that often is lacking today. So we’re really leaning in on that,” Diermeier says.
As part of the university commitment, Dialogue Vanderbilt was founded as a means to teach, research and lead efforts on civil discourse, democracy, and polarization.
Within the initiative, Vanderbilt—in conjunction with Google as well as global think tank Justitia—is set to host a symposium on AI, free speech, and human rights in October. Diermeier notes the intersection between the three often comes on social media, so questions of misinformation and regulation will be emphasized at the event in the context of a hyper technology-charged environment.
Leaders from Meta, OpenAI, and the U.S. Department of Defense are among the speakers.
Diermeier says he is “cautiously optimistic” about the future of free speech as people increasingly realize the importance of expression—though it remains difficult to predict how things will come to fruition.
AI in the classroom, admissions
AI more broadly is top of mind of many university leaders as it continues to shape the future of learning, teaching, and working.
In many advanced fields, such as microscopy and astronomy, Diermeier notes AI is already an important aspect and being used beyond generative AI tools like ChatGPT.
“My sense is in higher education, it will vary tremendously of how it’s going to be used. And we don’t know how it’s going to be used, but we’ll find out in the next few years,” he adds.
An important aspect of a future with AI is teaching students how to use tools effectively—and in an ethical fashion, he says. One way is through online learning. Over 140,000 individuals have enrolled in the university’s Prompt Engineering for ChatGPT online Coursera class.
But for students, one of the lingering questions moving in this school year: how far can generative AI be used in assignments and essays?
Deirmeier says at Vanderbilt, it ultimately comes down to the professor since while some classes may not need AI. In other fields, it is essential.
“We have a policy, but the policy is very much like for any technology is that it’s the faculty who decides. Also there are some faculty members, where AI really plays not an important role and they want to make sure that students write their term papers on their own,” he says.
When it comes to admissions, though, generative AI tools may be more difficult to regulate. The New York Times recently asked tools like ChatGPT and Bard to write essays for college applications at Harvard, Yale and Princeton. While the results were not overly eloquent, it does pose questions as AI improves.
Diermeier brushed off the concern, noting that colleges are not novices at detecting and fighting plagiarism.
“Admissions, of course, wants people to write their own essays,” he tells Fortune. “My sense is that this is not fundamentally different from somebody paying somebody to write an admissions essay for them. It was always a possibility. And that was, of course, against the rules, then, and having this done technology-wise would be against the rules now.”
The essay is also only one part of the admissions process, he adds—with the expectation that some applicants using AI will easily “catch the headlights.”
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