Campuses are currently experiencing an odd silence, the kind that occurs when something significant is happening but no one wants to be the first to identify it. You can see it if you stroll through any university library on a Tuesday afternoon. Instead of writing paragraphs, students were bent over laptops with headphones on and their fingers tapping out prompts. A different chatbot is being used by a professor down the hall to grade essays in the same manner. Everyone is aware. No one knows exactly what to do.
Sometime last year, the panic phase came to an end. What took its place seems odd, almost joyful. Faculty members who previously lamented the demise of the college essay now enroll in workshops titled “AI Literacy Essentials,” completely changing their brand. They might actually think the pivot is a good idea. They might simply be exhausted.
Think about what transpired at the California State University system. The administration declared CSU to be the nation’s first “AI-Empowered” university system and announced a $17 million partnership with OpenAI. The press release referred to “future-focused learning tools.” The system suggested cutting $375 million from its budget at about the same time. Sonoma State decided to drop philosophy, economics, and physics due to a $24 million deficit. Over 130 faculty positions were in jeopardy. In the same month that OpenAI representatives set up recruitment tables in the campus library, pink slips were distributed. You can learn something from the optics alone.
In September, USC researchers released results that supported the suspicions of the majority of professors. When they polled a thousand college students, they discovered that the majority were using AI for “executive help”—quick responses with little work. Students only interacted with the technology in ways that developed real understanding when instructors actively guided them. The typical student doesn’t pursue depth when left on their own with a chatbot. Why would they do that? A four-year degree’s incentive structure was never designed to encourage such self-discipline.
In the meantime, technology continues to advance. Currently, Khanmigo from Khan Academy is used in more than 570 school districts. According to a Nigerian study, the benefits of six months of AI tutoring were equal to those of two years of conventional education. Founded by Stanford alumni, Alpha School asserts that its students learn two to three times more quickly while devoting just two hours a day to their studies. The trajectory is difficult to ignore, but it remains to be seen if those figures hold up under closer examination.
Walking through these discussions gives me the impression that universities are being subtly hollowed out rather than disrupted. Years ago, Tesla faced similar skepticism and managed to survive by constructing factories that no one believed it could construct. There are no factories at universities. They have tenure committees, buildings, and an increasingly precarious credentialing monopoly. The diploma is still desired by students. It’s becoming unclear if they want the education beneath it and if the school can still provide it. The machines are picking up new skills. Whether the rest of us are listening is the question.
