"If you don't work at a university or have college-age kids, you may have missed the flurry of news stories and social media banter about AI adoption in higher ed, stories which have snowballed into the early fall semester. I don't mean the fear that AI-based cheating is going to destroy education as we know it-though who knows, it still might-but the mad dash among many universities and colleges to announce AI procurements and partnerships."
"While there are signs the AI fever is breaking elsewhere, largely due to declining corporate adoption and cash burn rates that would strain even the most ketamine-diluted circulatory system, and despite evangelists as zealous as Sam Altman talking about a bubble, university administrators across the country are all in on AI. If you don't work at a university or have college-age"
"For example, the co-founder of the asinine-sounding Alpha School, MacKenzie Price, went on Kevin Roose's New York Times podcast recently and pulled this whopper out of thin air: "60 percent of the jobs young people will do don't even exist yet." Alpha School, if you aren't familiar, is an "AI-powered" private academy that claims to "crush academics" in two hours, while the rest of the day is devoted to entrepreneurship and financial literacy."
Universities and colleges are quickly announcing AI procurements and partnerships, accelerating adoption across higher education. Administrators are embracing AI despite signals of declining corporate AI enthusiasm and warnings of a bubble. The push for campus AI tools accompanies concerns about AI enabling layoffs, redundancies, and forced adoption, even as tools may hinder productivity. The trend in higher education mirrors broader labor tensions across professional sectors, where AI is used to justify workforce changes. Private ventures promise novel, AI-driven educational shortcuts and new job landscapes for young people, adding pressure on students and faculty to conform.
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