Opinion: Higher Ed Should Embrace AI as an Opportunity - Kimberly E. Estep, GovTech

Colleges and universities that thrive in the era of artificial intelligence will be those that see AI not as a threat but as an opportunity to advance economic mobility through accessible, personalized education. Many colleges and universities have seen steady decline in enrollment since 2010, exacerbated by the pandemic five years ago and new applications of technological advancements. In a recent report, bestcolleges.com counted 84 colleges that have closed or merged since March 2020, including my own undergraduate alma mater, Judson College in Alabama. Despite this concerning trend, there are colleges and universities that are thriving in this new reality. My accredited online school, Western Governors University, is one of them. The strong University of Georgia network and the 22 colleges that make up the Technical College System of Georgia are a few other examples.

https://www.govtech.com/education/higher-ed/opinion-higher-ed-should-embrace-ai-as-an-opportunity

AI in HE: Assessment at risk or curriculum rethink needed? - Cristina Costa, University World News

In the frenzied attempt to address the impact of generative artificial intelligence (Gen-AI) in higher education, universities have narrowed their concerns to a key question: how to design ‘secure’ assessments that resist the influence of Gen-AI large language models. Such framing implicitly casts students as being at risk of Gen-AI influence. This is evident in institutional memos, working groups and practitioner discussions, which reflect a persistent concern with upholding academic integrity and ensuring that student work reflects their own effort. Yet, conversely, these same institutions champion Gen-AI as a tool for innovation and learning. These inconsistencies are too apparent to be ignored. This contradiction is not just ironic; it is symptomatic of a more profound issue. Gen-AI has come to expose higher education’s long-standing curriculum crisis: the transactional, performative approach to education that has undermined the deeper aims of higher learning, that of fostering meaningful intellectual growth and critical inquiry.

https://www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?story=2025111208115933

WVU Professor: After three years, ChatGPT has become a coworker—not a boss - David Sibray, West Virginia Explorer

Joshua Meadows, an assistant professor and director of  Data Driven WV at the WVU John Chambers College of Business and Economics in Morgantown, said the technology’s role has matured dramatically since its 2022 debut, moving from a “neat demo” to an essential part of daily operations for businesses and public institutions alike. Joshua Meadows, director of Data Driven WV, and service assistant professor, says "ChatGPT is now a household  name and an essential business tool,” Meadows said. “But where it needs to shine is as a workflow assistant with accountability. To serve our needs, ChatGPT must treat its own outputs merely as drafts, keeping humans responsible for decisions. That’s how its early promise is going to translate into repeatable, trustworthy results.”

https://wvexplorer.com/2025/11/12/wvu-chatgpt-at-three/

Accumulating Context Changes the Beliefs of Language Models - Jiayi Geng, et al; arXiv

Language model (LM) assistants are increasingly used in applications such as brainstorming and research. Improvements in memory and context size have allowed these models to become more autonomous, which has also resulted in more text accumulation in their context windows without explicit user intervention. This comes with a latent risk: the belief profiles of models -- their understanding of the world as manifested in their responses or actions -- may silently change as context accumulates. This can lead to subtly inconsistent user experiences, or shifts in behavior that deviate from the original alignment of the models. In this paper, we explore how accumulating context by engaging in interactions and processing text -- talking and reading -- can change the beliefs of language models, as manifested in their responses and behaviors. Our results reveal that models' belief profiles are highly malleable: GPT-5 exhibits a 54.7% shift in its stated beliefs after 10 rounds of discussion about moral dilemmas and queries about safety, while Grok 4 shows a 27.2% shift on political issues after reading texts from the opposing position....Our analysis exposes the hidden risk of belief shift as models undergo extended sessions of talking or reading, rendering their opinions and actions unreliable.

https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.01805?et_rid=508865405&et_cid=5790354

Empowering personalized learning at scale: Loyola Marymount University’s AI course companion - Lorin Miller, Matt Frank, and Brian Drawert, AWS Public Sector Blog

LMU’s mission emphasizes personal connections in learning through a high-touch, individualized approach. With most students turning to generic, off-the-shelf AI tools, the university saw an opportunity. “One of the things that sparked this is, ‘How do we make a better version of what’s currently available?’” said Matt Frank, director of teaching, learning, and research technology at LMU. Brian Drawert, manager of research computing at LMU and the AI Study Companion’s developer, explained the core issue: “AI was already trying to help students with their coursework, but doing it poorly. The challenge was giving them a chat interface that actually answered questions for their class.” Modern learners also juggle complex schedules, including jobs, family commitments, and study abroad programs, making traditional faculty office hours inaccessible to many students. Building a 24/7 solution was particularly important.

https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/publicsector/empowering-personalized-learning-at-scale-loyola-marymount-universitys-ai-course-companion/

EDUCAUSE ’25: How AI Policies Affect Student Mental Health - Abby Sourwine, GovTech

Punitive, fear-driven approaches to rule-making about artificial intelligence in higher education can deepen mistrust, stress and disconnection among students. Alternatively, there are opportunities for teachable moments. As some institutions and instructors respond to the boom of artificial intelligence with bans and automated detection tools, students are worried about being falsely accused of using AI. At the 2025 EDUCAUSE conference, Ashley Dockens, associate provost of digital learning at Lamar University, and Cindy Blackwell, director of academic faculty development at Texas A&M University, warned that higher-education leaders and teachers may be holding students to an unreasonable standard — expecting students to inherently understand when AI use is appropriate and inappropriate and, in the latter case, to keep a perfect track record of resisting temptation.

https://www.govtech.com/education/higher-ed/educause-25-how-ai-policies-affect-student-mental-health

Ohio State to hire 100 new faculty with AI expertise - OSU

The Ohio State University has announced a major Artificial Intelligence (AI) Faculty Hiring Initiative that will add 100 new tenure-track faculty with expertise in AI over the next five years. The initiative will expand AI research and education across disciplines and strengthen Ohio State’s position as a national and global leader in AI-driven discovery and societal impact. 

The new hires will join one of three AI Faculty cohorts:

Foundational AI — Elevating the theoretical, mathematical and algorithmic underpinnings of AI.

Applied AI — Harnessing AI to revolutionize the translation of ideas to real-world solutions for Ohio and beyond.

Responsible AI and Cybersecurity — Ensuring ethical innovation and safeguarding digital landscapes for a secure future.

https://news.osu.edu/ohio-state-to-hire-100-new-faculty-with-ai-expertise/

The state of AI in 2025: Agents, innovation, and transformation - McKinsey

Almost all survey respondents say their organizations are using AI, and many have begun to use AI agents. Most organizations are still in the experimentation or piloting phase: Nearly two-thirds of respondents say their organizations have not yet begun scaling AI across the enterprise. High curiosity in AI agents: Sixty-two percent of survey respondents say their organizations are at least experimenting with AI agents.

Positive leading indicators on impact of AI: Respondents report use-case-level cost and revenue benefits, and 64 percent say that AI is enabling their innovation. However, just 39 percent report EBIT impact at the enterprise level. High performers use AI to drive growth, innovation, and cost: Eighty percent of respondents say their companies set efficiency as an objective of their AI initiatives, but the companies seeing the most value from AI often set growth or innovation as additional objectives. Redesigning workflows is a key success factor: Half of those AI high performers intend to use AI to transform their businesses, and most are redesigning workflows. Differing perspectives on employment impact: Respondents vary in their expectations of AI’s impact on the overall workforce size of their organizations in the coming year: 32 percent expect decreases, 43 percent no change, and 13 percent increases.

https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/quantumblack/our-insights/the-state-of-ai

Google seeks partnerships lead to drive AI in higher education - Edtech Innovation Hub

Role aims to advance adoption. Google is recruiting a senior partnerships manager to help shape its artificial intelligence work across higher education, according to a recent LinkedIn post by Alisa Sommer O’Hara, who leads Global EdTech Business Partnerships and Developer Relations at the company. The new Strategic Partner Development Principal Lead will focus on building partnerships that drive the use of Gemini for Education, Google’s family of AI models designed to transform teaching, learning, and research. The position forms part of Google’s Learning and Education team, which develops tools and strategies to scale AI responsibly across academic environments.

https://www.edtechinnovationhub.com/news/google-seeks-partnerships-lead-to-drive-ai-in-higher-education

Scaling the 21st-century leadership factory - Bob Sternfels, Daniel Pacthod, and David H. Berger; McKinsey

In the wake of extreme uncertainty, CEOs should take a step back and reflect on the leadership traits and capabilities that will define their own and others’ success in the future and embed these traits and capabilities into their organizations. Our previous research on the art of 21st-century leadership, as well as our more recent thinking and discussions with CEOs on the topic, point to six critical traits for leadership success: positive energy, personal balance, and inspiration; servant and selfless leadership; continuous learning and a humble mindset; grit and resilience; levity; and stewardship.1

https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/strategy-and-corporate-finance/our-insights/scaling-the-21st-century-leadership-factory

Opinion: Higher education needs to catch up with AI, not run from it - Teresa Butzerin, Willamette Collegian

Given that AI will only become more prevalent in our lives, universities should be taking more formal steps to make sure graduating students are literate in the practical uses of AI and leave college with a well-rounded understanding of the ethical issues surrounding it. While the threat AI poses to academic integrity has caused it to become villainized in higher education, it’s time for universities to prioritize teaching students to use AI as a tool because these large language models are only getting faster, smarter and more omnipresent. A recent study conducted by OpenAI — the company that owns ChatGPT — revealed that over one-third of adults aged 18-24 in the U.S. use the chatbot regularly, and a significant portion of this use is related to the completion of schoolwork.

https://www.willamettecollegian.com/post/opinion-higher-education-needs-to-catch-up-with-ai-not-run-from-it

Transitioning to the Agentic University 2026–27 - Ray Schroeder, Inside Higher Ed

Most of us in higher education are now familiar with generative AI bots, where you formulate a prompt and get a reply. Yet, we are now beginning the advancement to agentic AI, the autonomous 24-7 project manager. The dramatic enhancement in the capability of AI as it moves from bots to agents will bring about efficiencies and have a far greater impact on the day-to-day operations, strategies and effectiveness of our institutions. We will become less expensive, more personalized and more responsive to students and employers. Those are big claims, so for this column, I turned to my personal assistant, Google Gemini 2.5 Pro on Nov. 1, 2025, to help me with identifying the pathway to those outcomes.

https://www.insidehighered.com/opinion/columns/online-trending-now/2025/11/12/transitioning-agentic-university-2026-27

Opinion: Ray Kurzweil’s Predictions — AI Today and Tomorrow - Jim A. Jorstad, GovTech

To prepare students for a world so saturated with technology, it has arguably never been more important to speculate on the possibilities of our future, and how we can prepare for it. In business, science and education, we are now continually searching for clues about the future of artificial intelligence. In October 2006, I had the opportunity to listen to computer scientist and inventor Ray Kurzweil at the EDUCAUSE conference as he spoke about “The Acceleration of Technology in the 21st Century: the Impact on Education and Society.” The future-facing ideas he shared back then still have relevance to education and our daily lives, and I’d like to highlight some of them.

https://www.govtech.com/education/higher-ed/opinion-ray-kurzweils-predictions-ai-today-and-tomorrow

Literature Is Not a Vibe: On ChatGPT and the Humanities - Rachele Dini, LA Review of Books

The Guardian published “A Machine-Shaped Hand” on March 12, a day after Altman first shared it on X. A callout link at the top of the page directed readers to Jeanette Winterson’s response, “OpenAI’s Metafictional Short Story About Grief Is Beautiful and Moving”—a not-so-subtly titled piece that, while making an unconvincing case for the story’s literary value, provided a solid argument for automating reviews via such gems as “Good writing moves us”; “What is beautiful and moving about this story is its understanding of its lack of understanding”; “AI reads us. Now it’s time for us to read AI”; and “Literature isn’t only entertainment. It is a way of seeing.” The story itself is about an LLM prompted to write an original metafictional literary work about AI and grief.

https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/literature-is-not-a-vibe-on-chatgpt-and-the-humanities/

President Aoun outlines roadmap for higher ed in the age of AI - Cyrus Moulton, Northeastern

Artificial intelligence can do your research and write your term paper. It cannot, however, interpret your professor’s expression when you hand that paper in. Northeastern University President Joseph E. Aoun said higher education’s role is to teach how to navigate such a situation. “The value of higher education is to raise those questions about the balance between human agency and AI agency,” Aoun said during a keynote address in Toronto on Tuesday. “What’s at stake for us in higher education is to remain relevant in the age of AI.”

https://news.northeastern.edu/2025/10/31/joseph-aoun-toronto-ai-summit/

Worst to first: What it takes to build or remake a world-class team - McKinsey

Building a team is hard; building a winning team is even harder. For every organization that manages to achieve the right mix of talent, culture, and performance expectations, many more find themselves lacking in one area or another. Consider the following cautionary tales. One team of “superstars” in a large technology organization failed to gel simply because they could not agree on working norms. Another high-performing group underachieved because the executive team and line managers had very different views of their roles: Executives were frustrated by line managers’ hesitancy to make and own critical decisions, while the line managers were afraid to be labeled as failures by these same executives if their moves deviated too far from the status quo. Both sides pointed fingers at each other when outcomes failed to meet expectations.

https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/transformation/our-insights/worst-to-first-what-it-takes-to-build-or-remake-a-world-class-team

Navigating AI Adoption in Higher Ed: College Presidents on Student Learning vs Operational Efficiency - University Business

While generative AI tools like ChatGPT have dominated headlines and sparked urgent conversations about academic integrity and pedagogy, many institutions are simultaneously exploring AI’s potential to revolutionize back-office operations—from enrollment management and advising to financial planning and facilities management. In this candid conversation, three college presidents share how they’re navigating these parallel paths of AI adoption. Should institutions prioritize AI investments that directly impact student learning experiences, or focus on operational efficiencies that can free up resources and improve service delivery? Are these truly competing priorities, or can they be part of a unified strategy?

https://universitybusiness.com/navigating-ai-adoption-in-higher-ed-college-presidents-on-student-learning-vs-operational-efficiency/

New front door to the internet: Winning in the age of AI search - McKinsey

Half of consumers use AI-powered search today, and it stands to impact $750 billion in revenue by 2028–what is your strategy and activation plan for gen AI engine optimization? Hot on the heels of the ascent of social media as a means of researching and buying products, consumers are quickly defaulting to AI-powered search (through both AI-powered apps like ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot, Perplexity, and Claude, and Google’s AI Overview) to guide their choices, evaluate brands, and increasingly to discover new ones. About 50 percent of Google searches already have AI summaries, a figure expected to rise to more than 75 percent by 2028, according to trend analysis. Half of consumers polled in a McKinsey survey now intentionally seek out AI-powered search engines, with a majority of users saying it’s the top digital source they use to make buying decisions.

https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/growth-marketing-and-sales/our-insights/new-front-door-to-the-internet-winning-in-the-age-of-ai-search

America is slipping in higher education. The slide starts long before college. - Courtney Brown, Lumina Foundation

The latest Education at a Glance report from The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) offers an unsettling portrait of the United States. Once a global leader in higher education, the country now finds itself spending more than nearly any of its peer nations while delivering outcomes that fall increasingly short. American students are less likely to complete college on time, and more likely to leave school burdened by debt without a degree. They are navigating a system that continues to promise opportunity while too often failing to deliver it in practice. If we want to reverse this trend, we have to treat education not as a patchwork of disconnected stages, but as a continuous journey that demands investment, planning, and care at every level. 

https://www.luminafoundation.org/news-and-views/america-is-slipping-in-higher-education-the-slide-starts-long-before-college/

Why Online Learning is the Future of Education Worldwide - Daily Blend, Vocal.Media

Discover how online learning is driving the future of education around the world. Learn about its benefits, challenges and how it is evolving classrooms into global digital communities.  In an increasingly digital world, online learning has transformed the way that people acquire an education. Whether we are talking about an elementary or secondary student, a university student, or a professional returning to school to upgrade their skills, the internet has opened the door for education to be flexible, affordable, and global. The COVID-19 pandemic helped change the frequency of online learning; even after life went back to normal, online learning had only grown in popularity. Today, it's clear that online learning is the future of education worldwide due to advances in technology, accessibility, and innovation that we simply cannot do in a traditional system. 

https://vocal.media/education/why-online-learning-is-the-future-of-education-worldwide

Here are 6 ways data analytics will change in higher ed - Alcino Donadel, University Business

Data analytics are increasingly vital for streamlining campus operations and driving strategy to improve the student experience. AI has spawned a web of technologies and practices that should lead to more advancements, according to a new report from EDUCAUSE, an education technology nonprofit. “The future of institutional effectiveness, student success and innovation will hinge on how well colleges and universities adapt their data strategies to this changing environment,” the report read. International higher ed and technology leaders cited in the report have identified six trends with the greatest potential to transform data analytics.

https://universitybusiness.com/here-are-6-ways-data-analytics-will-change-in-higher-ed/

Deploying agentic AI with safety and security: A playbook for technology leaders - McKinsey

Autonomous AI agents present a new world of opportunity—and an array of novel and complex risks and vulnerabilities that require attention and action now. While agentic AI has the potential to deliver immense value, the technology also presents an array of new risks—introducing vulnerabilities that could disrupt operations, compromise sensitive data, or erode customer trust. Not only do AI agents provide new external entry points for would-be attackers, but because they are able to make decisions without human oversight, they also introduce novel internal risks. In cybersecurity terms, you might think of AI agents as “digital insiders”—entities that operate within systems with varying levels of privilege and authority. Just like their human counterparts, these digital insiders can cause harm unintentionally, through poor alignment, or deliberately if they become compromised. Already, 80 percent of organizations say they have encountered risky behaviors from AI agents, including improper data exposure and access to systems without authorization.3

https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/risk-and-resilience/our-insights/deploying-agentic-ai-with-safety-and-security-a-playbook-for-technology-leaders

Bridging the Skills Gap: How Online Training Is Reshaping Workforce Readiness - Stuart Gentle, OnRec

Employers are struggling to find candidates equipped with the practical and technical skills required for modern roles. At the same time, professionals are seeking ways to remain competitive and relevant in evolving job markets. That’s where digital learning platforms come into play, providing flexible, accessible, and industry-aligned training opportunities. For instance, many aspiring professionals turn to AtHomePrep license exam help to prepare for certification exams and career advancement. These programs not only make education more accessible but also help bridge the gap between education and employability in today’s rapidly changing economy.

https://www.onrec.com/news/news-archive/bridging-the-skills-gap-how-online-training-is-reshaping-workforce-readiness