In a commentary, SMU President Professor Lily Kong argued that the age of AI makes an apparently settled question newly urgent: not what skills the future requires, but what a university exists for. She observed that longer lives, lengthening careers and the accelerating renewal of knowledge mean the old sequence of education, work and retirement no longer holds, and that graduation should mark the beginning of a long-term learning relationship rather than its end. The university of the future, she wrote, must serve not only the 18-year-old student but the 35-year-old professional changing direction, the 50-year-old beginning a second career, and members of society who keep on learning. Rather than chasing every new technology into the curriculum, universities should develop the capabilities that endure — judgement, empathy, cross-cultural understanding, communication, resilience and the ability to bring different perspectives together — which are hardest for AI to replace. Whole person education, she argued, is not a supplement alongside professional education but the core of a university education. A university's success should ultimately be measured not by how quickly its graduates find a first job, but by whether it equips people to keep learning, adapting and growing decades later.