#ai-in-education

#ai-in-education

The issue is not that the column takes AI seriously; higher education should take AI seriously. The issue is that it mistakes machine-generated prescription for human judgment and acceleration for destiny.

Content is abundant. Genuine understanding-the kind that survives three weeks and transfers to a new problem-is far rarer. Completion rates for online courses hover below 15%, according to MIT and Harvard researchers studying MOOCs. Students enroll with real intent, then drift away. The content was never the problem. The design was.

A Pew Research Center survey of 1,458 U.S. teens and their parents from Sept. 25 to Oct. 9, 2025-finds that 57% of teens use AI to search for information, while 54% use it to help with schoolwork. Yet their queries extend beyond asking a chatbot to define the Pythagorean Theorem or to explain the significance of Boo Radley's character in To Kill a Mockingbird.

Parents are opting their children out of school-issued laptops and are asking teachers to return to pen and paper. In a recent report, families described a growing discomfort with this digital imperative in education. Importantly, this is less about the logistical aspects of technology and more about something universal: Control. These instincts seem reasonable. Screens distract, and artificial intelligence hovers over homework like an invisible, or worse, a co-conspirator in cheating.

Whenever I made my initial rounds at a school, a quick peek at its technological resources was often a reliable predictor of its ability to meet students' broad needs. The differences in the quality and volume of computing labs at a school like Lincoln Park High School on Chicago's wealthy north side, where the local population is 75% white, versus Raby High School, located in economically distressed East Garfield Park which is 83% Black, were stark.

Designed for a comparative literature course on medieval and Renaissance-era writing and announced by UCLA at the end of 2024, the digital textbook was immediately met with widespread mockery and derision from educators. Its AI-generated cover was riddled with incomprehensible text - "Of Nerniacular Latin To An Evoolitun On Nance Langusages," for example - and featured generic visuals that had little to do with the period it was supposedly covering. At the time, Elizabeth Landers, a grad student who helped put together the volume, said that the errors "aren't a failure of AI." Instead, she argued, "they're an intentional artistic choice that prompts students to question their assumptions about language, meaning and historical truth."