Brabet, J. (2026) Cooperating for the future of higher education: Walking the talk in the digital bifurcation. European Management Review, 23(3), 537–544. https://doi-org.ezproxy.u-pec.fr/10.1111/emre.70099

Higher education is being reshaped by accelerated digital development in a con-text marked by multiple crises. Its future becomes an urgent question in a situa-tion that makes the future increasingly difficult to imagine. What shoulduniversities' missions, resources, organisational forms, research priorities, peda-gogical responsibilities and social commitments be? Can Higher Education Insti-tutions still function as central sites for the production and transmission ofknowledge? More fundamentally, should they merely adapt to global transforma-tions, or should they help build a more desirable society? This article approachesthese questions through scenarios understood here not as predictive methods butas tools for diagnosis, debate and collective reflection. At the centre of our analy-sis are digital technologies and the expanding power of Big Tech firms, whoseinfrastructures increasingly dominate economic life, public culture, state capaci-ties and educational institutions. We therefore develop two contrasting scenarios.The first is dystopian: the colonisation and polarisation of higher education byBig Tech. The second is utopian: a cooperative, research-led university in whichenvironmentally frugal digitalisation serves democratisation and the developmentof individual and collective capabilities.