Beyond boundaries: Learning at the intersection of disciplines
Climate change, artificial intelligence, public health, and the energy transition all share a common challenge: they can’t be solved by one discipline alone. Addressing these complex issues requires experts who can combine deep knowledge from different fields, communicate across boundaries, and develop solutions together. In its eights Future Report, IT:U explores how higher education can evolve to address the challenges of tomorrow.
Interdisciplinary learning is more than combining disciplines
As technology reshapes society at an unprecedented pace, universities must rethink how they prepare students for an increasingly complex world. While technical expertise remains fundamental, future graduates also need the ability to collaborate across disciplines, adapt to rapid change, and tackle complex challenges from multiple perspectives.
Across Europe, universities are exploring new ways to prepare students for challenges that cross traditional academic boundaries. However, bringing different disciplines together doesn’t automatically create interdisciplinary learning.
The German Science Council distinguishes between three approaches:
- Multidisciplinarity: different disciplines contribute alongside each other without deeper integration.
- Interdisciplinarity: disciplines work together through shared methods, terminology, and approaches to a common question.
- Transdisciplinarity: academic experts collaborate with actors from society, industry, or policy to develop solutions.
True interdisciplinarity requires more than combining subjects. It demands maintaining disciplinary depth while creating structures that support meaningful exchange.
Designing interdisciplinarity from the beginning
IT:U represents one of the few institutions designed around interdisciplinarity from the start. In 2020 the university was created around this idea: Rather than treating interdisciplinarity as an add-on, it has embedded it into the very structure of the university, shaping how teaching, research, and collaboration take place.
Unlike traditional universities, IT:U does not organize itself around conventional faculties. Instead, students work in small, diverse teams on real-world challenges, supported by professors, Lab Experts, and Learning Coaches. This structure is designed to make collaboration across disciplines part of everyday learning:
- Professors provide disciplinary expertise and scientific guidance.
- Lab Experts contribute practical experience from research and industry contexts.
- Learning Coaches support students throughout their projects by helping them reflect on collaboration, communication, and problem-solving processes.
This approach recognizes that working across disciplines is itself a skill that needs to be learned.
A key principle behind this model is the idea of the “symmetry of ignorance”: complex problems are too large for any single person to fully understand. Progress comes from recognizing the limits of individual expertise and combining different perspectives.
Computing as a shared language
A central element of IT:U’s approach is its appointment strategy. Rather than creating separate departments that collaborate occasionally, IT:U defines professorships at the intersection of computing and another field. One of the biggest challenges in interdisciplinary collaboration is communication. Different disciplines often use different concepts, methods, and ways of approaching problems. At IT:U, computing provides a common language that connects different areas of expertise. Computational approaches can support research in medicine, environmental science, economics, and the humanities, enabling students and researchers to collaborate across traditional boundaries. The goal is not to replace disciplinary expertise, but to create connections between fields while maintaining academic standards.
By building these principles into hiring, teaching, and research from the beginning, IT:U is demonstrating what a university can look like in a world where the biggest challenges can’t be solved within traditional boundaries.
Want to learn more or collaborate with IT:U?
Discover the IT:U Future Report and connect with our Outreach & Startups team.