Summary of an article originally published in Portuguese in Observador.
The university has become increasingly capable of functioning with fewer academics physically present. Classes, papers, projects, and meetings continue to happen, often at a distance. The issue is not that this is impossible or inefficient, but that being physically present at the university seems to have lost part of its value.
The article argues that an important part of academic life emerges from interactions that rarely appear in reports or performance metrics: corridor conversations, unexpected questions from students, results discussed at an office door, and ideas that arise without being planned. Physical presence therefore acts as an infrastructure of availability and shared intellectual life.
At the same time, universities have learned to measure mainly individual outputs, such as publications, projects, funding, and completed theses. They measure much less well what becomes possible because people are together. When each academic assumes that others will not be present, staying home becomes rational, and absence begins to generate further absence.
The central question is therefore what is lost when the university ceases to be an inhabited place. Students may have the most to lose, because an academic community also teaches through proximity, conversation, uncertainty, and ways of thinking that do not fit neatly into a curriculum.