The threat that AI poses to the future of higher education would be less imminent if it weren’t for a list of other ways that universities have become worse for students and families. These include:
- A cost of attending that’s grown faster than inflation for decades.
- The concentration of donations to the most elite institutions where the marginal benefit is the lowest.
- The underfunding and politicization of state universities by legislatures.
- Degree requirements detached from the needs of the labor market and the students entering it.
Dr. Shehu notes much of the same in this provocative article. She has a unique vantage point with her background in education and AI. Higher ed has survived attacks on its legitimacy in the past, but AI is something new that poses a stronger threat.
As much as we want to think this moment is unique, we stand at a similar inflection. The question is the same. The pressures are different. The hedging that has carried the American university through the last half century is no longer available, and the institution will have to answer, in language its students and their families can recognize as honest, what it is now for.
The article doesn’t—and I don’t either—make the case that higher ed is doomed, but it will absolutely need to change to better meet the needs of our students and communities.
The university has told one story to its trustees, its accreditors, and the public, which is the story of the holistic education, the formation of citizens, the cultivation of judgment, the well-rounded life of the mind. It has told a different story to its students and their families and the labor market, which is the story of the credential, the ticket, the signal, the return on investment. The two stories were never quite compatible. They were held in suspension by an institution wealthy enough, slow enough, and culturally trusted enough that no one had to choose.