Professor Tom Harrison
As with many universities, the motto of the University of Birmingham is in Latin: per ardua ad alta. Adopted as part of the university’s original coat of arms 125 years ago, it remains in use today. While it can be translated in several ways, most commonly ‘through efforts to high things’, I prefer a more purposeful interpretation, striving for excellence.
For me this phrasing transforms the motto from a statement into an aspiration. It informs how I think about what students should aim for during their time at Birmingham, but also to how our teachers should design and deliver teaching and learning in a modern context.
Per Ardua – The Necessity of Striving in the Age of AI
The motto begins with per ardua – ‘through striving.’ It may sound like a cliché, but it remains true: learning happens in the process of education, not merely in the production of outputs. Effective teaching deliberately structures and scaffolds this process to include what we might call productive struggle. This is why the concept of the zone of proximal development is so important: it represents the ‘sweet spot’ where learners are challenged just enough to grow, without becoming overwhelmed or disengaged.
Striving is not about always being right or always succeeding. It is about effort, persistence, and crucially, failure. Some of the most powerful learning often happens at the point of difficulty or error. True learning often involves discomfort, self-doubt, and the need for resilience and determination. As my 5 year old nephew wisely said to me recently, ‘mistakes are our friends’.
This idea of striving has always been central to education, but it feels more important than ever in the age of AI. When students use AI in ways that place limited or no cognitive demand on them, they lose valuable opportunities to learn. The challenge, therefore, is not whether students use AI, but how they use it.
We must ensure there is meaningful friction between the student and the tool. Students should engage with AI in ways that challenge their thinking, not bypass it. This means that students leverage AI, when appropriate, as a targeted tool, drawing on strong foundational knowledge and metacognitive awareness. It is our responsibility to help students see the benefits of not trading long-term learning for short-term performance, helping them to not fall behind educationally due to cognitive offloading.
In effect, students that do make that trade-off are not just ‘cheating the system’, they are cheating themselves out of deeper, more meaningful learning. They have not learnt that deep and rich higher education requires an appropriate level of striving.
Ad Alta – Academic and Character Excellence
This brings us to the second part of the motto: ad alta—’to the heights’ or, as I would argue, ‘for excellence’.
Importantly, this excellence must extend beyond academic excellence alone. The purpose of education, for me, is not simply to develop knowledge and skills that can be assessed. It must also involve the cultivation of character—what many universities, including Birmingham, often describe as graduate attributes.
Character is what enables students to apply their knowledge wisely and ethically. Character underpins judgement, responsibility, and the ability to navigate complexity. This idea draws on traditions of virtue ethics, most notably associated with Aristotle, who argued that human flourishing is achieved through the development of virtues and practical wisdom.
The Greek concept of arête, often translated as excellence, reinforces this idea. Excellence is not just about what we achieve, but about who we become. It is reflected in qualities such as integrity, courage, justice, creativity, compassion, discernment, and civility. These are the hallmarks of personal, professional, and academic excellence.
At a time when AI is rapidly advancing, arguably to the point where it can replicate knowledge more efficiently than any human, we must reconsider where the true value of a university lies. Predictions that AI may soon achieve near-perfect scores on even the most challenging exams only sharpen this question.
The answer is not to abandon academic excellence – far from it. Universities must continue to foster intellectual curiosity, interdisciplinary thinking, and seek the creation of new knowledge. But there is now an even greater imperative to balance and infuse this with the development of character.
The good news is that universities are somewhat uniquely positioned to do this. Reflecting on my own experience, university was one of the most formative periods of my life. It was not just the academic challenge, but the experience of living independently, engaging with diverse perspectives, and grappling with questions about my future. These experiences, shaped by both tutors and peers, helped develop not just my knowledge, but my character.
Per Ardua Ad Alta – A Virtuous Circle
Per Ardua Ad Alta, when conceptualised as outlined above, can also give rise to a virtuous circle. Through striving, virtue is developed; and through the pursuit of personal and professional excellence, students become more likely to recognise both the value and the satisfaction inherent in that striving.
This is one of the reasons why the new university-wide pathway we have introduced at the University of Birmingham, across undergraduate and postgraduate programmes, is intentionally and I believe aptly named ad alta. It reflects our commitment to embedding the development of human qualities alongside academic learning. It provides a structure through which we can innovate in curriculum and assessment, creating more opportunities for productive struggle, intellectual engagement, and character development. In short, it brings the motto per ardua ad alta to life.
Striving for excellence is more than a historical phrase, I see it today as a guiding principle for what a great university education looks like in the age of AI. It challenges us to design learning that values process as much as product, effort as much as outcome, and character as much as knowledge.
If we get this right, the motto will not simply endure, I hope it will define the future of education at the university and hopefully influence others beyond. It will also, I believe, ensure, at a time when universities are under threat, that they have a future as they continue to serve a vital purpose, providing a rich, challenging, advanced education that contributes to human flourishing.
