"The scene is familiar to anyone working in a contemporary university: A department chair sits in front of a glowing screen, tasked with drafting a strategic plan, a tenure evaluation or a grant proposal. The cursor blinks. The exhaustion is palpable. It is not physical fatigue, but a particular kind of epistemic weariness. After a moment's hesitation, the chair opens a generative AI tool, pastes in a handful of bullet points and asks for a draft aligned with the institution's core values and strategic priorities."
"Current anxieties about artificial intelligence in higher education focus overwhelmingly on students. Faculty worry that AI tools will allow undergraduates to bypass the struggle of learning by producing essays without understanding. This concern is not misplaced, but it obscures a more consequential transformation occurring on the other side of the classroom. The deeper risk is not that students will fake their way to degrees."
A department chair uses a generative AI tool to draft administrative texts, producing fluent, institutionally calibrated documents with minimal effort. Such tools remove the epistemic strain and risk that traditionally accompanied academic decision-making. Current concerns emphasize student misuse of AI, but faculty and administrators face a deeper transformation. Generative outputs create a synthetic authority that sustains institutional power while hollowing out the intellectual substance that once justified that power. Historically, academic expertise depended on asymmetric knowledge and the willingness to stake reputation on uncertain judgments. Automated drafting replaces judgment and risk-taking with polished conformity, eroding substantive academic authority and accountability.
Read at Inside Higher Ed | Higher Education News, Events and Jobs
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