The Power–Wisdom Gap: Reframing Higher Education for Human Flourishing in the Age of Artificial Intelligence

Higher education is increasingly asked to prepare learners for societies shaped by artificial intelligence, ecological destabilization, labour-market reconfiguration and declining institutional trust. Yet many universities remain governed by a scarcity model: knowledge transmission, durable credentials and economic productivity. This article argues that the model is structurally misaligned with emerging conditions because the central educational challenge is shifting from knowledge scarcity to power abundance. The deeper crisis is not a deficit of knowledge production but a deficit of formation: higher education has underdeveloped the human capacities required to use technologically amplified power wisely, meaningfully and responsibly. The article develops this argument through a conceptual design with an embedded systematized scoping review and thematic synthesis across higher education studies, AI governance, futures and foresight, sustainability transitions, human flourishing, wisdom science and research metrics. It proposes flourishing stewardship as a new first principle for higher education: the cultivation of persons and institutions capable of pursuing meaningful lives while preserving and advancing the conditions for shared human and planetary flourishing. The article contributes the Flourishing Stewardship Transformation Model, linking external transition conditions, scarcity-model misalignment, the power-wisdom gap, six formation capacities and five institutional transformation levers. The model is operationalized through design questions, researchable indicators and propositions for future empirical testing. The paper contributes to technological forecasting and social change by positioning higher education as a socio-technical transition infrastructure whose purpose is not merely to adapt learners to technological change, but to form the human agency needed to govern it.