Now Is the Time to Plan and Prepare Your Students and Colleagues on Workplace AI - Ray Schroeder, Inside Higher Ed

If ever there was a most important era in which we must emphasize discourse with our students, it is today. We are in the midst of major changes in our culture and society as a whole. How, then, do we prepare our learners to enter a job market where the primary tools are making huge advances two or three times within the span of a single semester? First, we, ourselves, must become AI fluent. Through professional development either at our own institution or online via short courses, we need to master the foundations. Then, we must build regular update readings into our weekly schedules. There are scores of high-quality blogs, podcasts and YouTube series designed to keep readers and viewers up to speed. For example, I publish a free and open daily reading list on “AI in Higher Education by UPCEA.” There are several steps in the process that we should consider applying across our curricula to ensure our graduates and certificate holders are best prepared for job interviews and ensuing careers in the rapidly changing workplace.

https://www.insidehighered.com/opinion/columns/online-trending-now/2026/09/02/time-plan-and-prepare-students-and-colleagues-ai

Report: Benchmarking Online Ed - Colleen Flaherty, Inside Higher Ed

Last year, the online and professional education association UPCEA urged institutions to close the gap between student expectations on institutional preparedness for online learning as part of its annual report on the Benchmarking Online Enterprises Survey. This year’s report, released Monday, warns that the story beneath the 2026 data isn’t one of a “rising tide lifting every online enterprise equally, but rather a sector beginning to sort itself into those pulling ahead and those bracing for contraction.”

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/quick-takes/2026/08/18/report-benchmarking-online-ed

With New AI Requirements and Courses, Colleges Eye AI Fluency - Emma Whitford, Inside Higher Ed

Their approaches may differ but their motivations are the same: Employers are, at breakneck speed, increasingly asking for graduates who know how to effectively use AI. It’s called AI fluency, said Ray Schroeder, a senior fellow at the online and professional education association UPCEA, and it “can be a decisive factor between getting a job and not, especially at entry level,” he said.  “Corporate HR departments who do the hiring are requiring or evaluating how much experience and ability applicants have in [AI], and it’s very important to those corporations because AI is becoming very important in their day-to-day operations,” he added.  As of March, more than a third—35 percent—of entry-level jobs require AI skills, up from 13 percent six months prior, according to the most recent job outlook survey from the National Association of Colleges and Employers.

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/faculty/teaching/2026/08/20/ai-requirements-and-courses-colleges-eye-ai-fluency

Once globally preeminent, U.S. universities are sliding into decline - Jon Marcus, Hechinger Report

Now, as a new academic year begins, American dominance in higher education globally is incontrovertibly in decline, according to data, international rankings and independent experts.  The slide has been accelerated by a year and a half of funding cuts, restrictions on international students and curbs on what can be said or taught. But it began before those political challenges, with enrollment declines, lackluster returns on ever-rising prices and public mistrust. “It takes a while for all of these problems to trickle down, but they are beginning to trickle down,” said Eric Mlyn, a faculty fellow at the Kenan Institute for Ethics at Duke University who studies academic freedom.

https://hechingerreport.org/once-globally-preeminent-u-s-universities-are-sliding-into-decline/

College costs for families up 10% from last year, poll finds - Natalie Schwartz, Higher Ed Dive

College costs for families averaged $34,019 during the 2025-26 academic year, up 10% from the previous year, according to an annual report from financial services company Sallie Mae. Families paid out of pocket for 49% of those costs — which include tuition, fees, housing and other expenses — drawing from student and parent income and savings, according to a poll for Sallie Mae conducted by Ipsos. They covered another 27% through scholarships and grants and 22% through borrowing. A much smaller amount, 2%, came from gifts from friends and family. How families pay for college could change in the coming years with the implementation of new federal student lending caps. Even so, two-thirds of surveyed families said they support federal lending limits, and 53% said colleges should respond by lowering tuition rates. 

https://www.highereddive.com/news/college-costs-for-families-up-10-from-last-year-poll-finds/827623/

More Than a Virtual Class: How BU Virtual Brings the Classroom to Students Around the World - Boston University Virtual

For a student logging into a live session in one of Boston University’s online graduate programs, the experience can look deceptively simple: a faculty member appears on screen, classmates join from around the world, and the class begins. What students don’t see is everything happening around that moment. Behind each live online class is a coordinated team of producers, technicians, learning facilitators and instructional designers working alongside faculty members to create an experience designed specifically for working professionals. Cameras are positioned, audio is monitored, presentations and video are queued, graphics appear at the right moment, student questions are managed, and faculty are supported throughout the session. The goal is not to showcase the technology. It is to make the technology disappear.

https://www.bu.edu/online/2026/08/13/more-than-a-virtual-class-how-bu-virtual-brings-the-classroom-to-students-around-the-world/

One New Thing: Virtual Reality Brings Collaborative Learning to Life - Melissa Morriss-Olson, US News

Purdue University’s Envision Center has developed CollabXR, an extended reality platform that allows faculty and students to enter the same immersive virtual environment and interact with three-dimensional models together. During a spring 2025 pilot, instructors in disciplines ranging from nursing and aeronautics to the liberal arts used the platform to help students visualize and explore complex concepts that would be difficult to experience in a traditional classroom. According to CollabXR’s website, the tool can allow students to “watch a heart beat in the palm of [their] hands, annotate the Hubble telescope or dive into an exploding star in space.”

https://www.usnews.com/education/u-s-news-higher-ground/articles/2026-08-13/virtual-reality-brings-collaborative-learning-to-life

From Workshop to Anytime: Bringing Live Training Online - Office of Innovative Technologies (UK)

Some of the most valuable learning opportunities on campus happen in workshops. Whether they happen in a conference room or over Zoom, they create energy, connection, and opportunities for real-time questions. Workshops support learning and engagement across campus throughout the year. What a single session can’t do is reach everyone who needs it or remain available when future learners are ready. When a workshop is worth offering again or making available to an audience that can’t all gather at once, an online, self‑paced version keeps that good work going. Creating an effective online learning experience is more than simply posting a recording. 

https://oit.utk.edu/news/from-workshop-to-anytime-bringing-live-training-online/

A look at trends in college consolidation since 2016 - Higher Ed Dive Team

We’re tracking major closings, mergers, acquisitions and other consolidation among public and private nonprofit institutions from 2016 to the present. The last few years have been tumultuous for many U.S. colleges. Pressure to lower tuition, stagnating state funding and a shrinking pool of high school graduates has strained many institutions’ bottom lines and questioned their long-term viability. Those pressures have caused some to close. We’ve been tracking consolidation across higher education since the fall of 2018, looking back as far as 2016. Our goal was not to create a death watch but rather to give our readers a tool to show the scope of that activity and any patterns within it. To make those trends easier to detect, we updated our tracker with a map showing closings and significant consolidations by state. In doing that, we also revised our list to omit certain consolidation activity among public institutions in which their footprints remained largely the same. Prior to this update, we removed for-profit colleges from our list; this was due to their differences in scale from private nonprofit and public institutions as well as the sometimes fragmented nature of their closings.

https://www.highereddive.com/news/how-many-colleges-and-universities-have-closed-since-2016/539379/

What Canvas learned from a massive cyberattack - Alcino Donadel, University Business

Artificial intelligence has made it easier for cyberattackers to breach college and university systems and steal valuable student and staff data. Canvas, higher education’s most high-profile victim this year, is remodeling its security to prepare for the inevitable next attempt. What experts have learned is that colleges may be sorely underprepared for the next evolution in cybersecurity. “A lot of the conversation around cybersecurity in the next six months is going to be about speed,” says Zach Pendleton, chief architect at Instructure. “Everything that made a good security program a year ago still matters, but the speed at which we’re implementing them doesn’t match the moment.” Instructure, the edtech company behind learning management system Canvas, suffered one of the largest data breaches in the U.S. this year after cybercriminals gained access through a third-party vendor—an increasingly common occurrence in higher ed.

https://universitybusiness.com/what-canvas-learned-from-a-massive-cyberattack/

Focus on the Quantum Future - Ray Schroeder, Inside Higher Ed

While artificial general intelligence and artificial super intelligence will mark significant improvements in AI algorithms, there is not a single clear definition of either of these terms. Therefore, some experts believe that we have already achieved AGI and that ASI is just a year or two away; others say it will be the middle of the century before either is achieved. So, without minimizing the impact of any of the steps toward general and super intelligence, I think we are better served by focusing on more solidly defined steps in AI advancement. That brings us to what may become a pivotal stage of development in AI, the use of stable quantum computing to accelerate and extend the potential of algorithms. 

https://www.insidehighered.com/opinion/columns/online-trending-now/2026/08/19/focus-quantum-future

Loss of International Students Could Cost Economy $3.4B - Kathryn Palmer, Inside Higher Ed

The United States may have as many as 112,000 fewer international students enrolled in higher education this coming academic year, according to new projections that NAFSA: Association of International Educators and JB International published Tuesday. Based on data from the Institute of International Education, the analysis estimates that about 1,057,000 international students will be enrolled at a college or university during the 2026–27 academic year, compared to an estimated 1,169,000 during the 2025–26 academic year. 

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/quick-takes/2026/08/12/loss-international-students-could-cost-economy-34b

Building expertise in the age of AI: Who trains the next generation? - Bryan Hancock, McKinsey

Building expertise in the age of AI: Who trains the next generation? - Bryan Hancock, McKinsey

For decades, organizations have relied on early-career talent to do the routine, lower-risk work that supports the business and to serve as a training ground for future leaders. Think of Peggy Olson’s trajectory on Mad Men, from novice assistant to Don Draper’s protégé to confident copy chief at an advertising agency—a climb that began because routine work kept her in the room where judgment was practiced, and where her own could be noticed. In real life, advances in automation and AI are changing the composition of entry-level work itself. Tasks such as research, documentation, data cleanup, basic coding, and preliminary analysis are being streamlined or absorbed into AI systems. These are precisely the activities through which young employees have traditionally built instincts, developed judgment, and earned the right to take on more. At the same time, fears are growing about the impact of AI on jobs. In the 2025 Women in the Workplace report by McKinsey and LeanIn.Org, entry-level workers, particularly women, reported feeling the most worried of all age groups about how AI use will affect their jobs. 

https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/people-and-organizational-performance/our-insights/building-expertise-in-the-age-of-ai-who-trains-the-next-generation

Improving GPT‑5.6 Sol in ChatGPT—and expanding access to GPT‑5.6 Luna for free users - OpenAI

Our mission is to ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity. We’re introducing updates to ChatGPT that improve everyday conversations while expanding access for Free users. For Plus and Pro users, we’re updating GPT‑5.6 Sol in Chat to be more reliable with facts and provide more focused answers. A new slider lets you choose how much thought ChatGPT puts into each response. For Free users, we're updating the default model to GPT‑5.6 Luna and expanding access with unlimited text chats. For questions that need more thought, a new Think button lets you access higher reasoning for harder questions.

https://openai.com/index/improving-gpt-5-6-sol-in-chatgpt/

AI won’t kill the college degree, but it will change what it’s for - Colin Gabler, Atlanta Journal Constitution

In the AI era, the value of college will not be measured by the output students generate, but whether they can form and defend the judgments they make behind it. That shift to artificial intelligence is already changing what counts as evidence of real learning in higher education, how we justify the valuable time and resources students, parents, local communities and potential employers invest in the next generation of citizens. I saw this firsthand in my MBA classroom, where students recently presented market-entry strategies to a live client. Article author, Colin Gabler says  In this op-ed at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, I argue that college is worth its cost in the age of AI only if it develops graduates who can interpret, challenge, and take responsibility for machine-shaped decisions rather than merely execute them.

https://www.ajc.com/opinion/2026/08/ai-wont-kill-the-college-degree-but-it-will-change-what-its-for/

OpenAI wants teachers and profs to foist their work off on ChatGPT - The Register

The House of Altman announced a trio of new education-focused offerings on Tuesday: one for K-12 teachers, another for college educators, and a third for college students. The new plugins, the company explained, will help students and educators make more use of ChatGPT’s agentic capabilities for both studying and teaching. The new features are available through ChatGPT Edu, an institutionally licensed suite for higher education, and ChatGPT for Teachers, a free resource available to verified US K–12 educators and school districts. The new offerings, says OpenAI, build on its educational AI philosophy that “AI should support learning, not shortcut it, and the best learning experiences keep educators and students in control.”

https://www.theregister.com/ai-and-ml/2026/08/04/openai-wants-teachers-and-profs-to-foist-their-work-off-on-chatgpt/5283064

Fitch: New visa limits could hurt international enrollment and revenue - Natalie Schwartz, Higher Ed Dive

The Trump administration’s new rule capping international student visa stays at four years could hurt revenue and decrease enrollment at colleges, particularly those that heavily rely on foreign students, according to a Tuesday analysis from Fitch Ratings. Financial pressure will be greatest on institutions with weaker student demand, limited financial flexibility, and a high reliance on tuition and fee revenue, Fitch analysts said. Colleges with significant STEM and graduate offerings could also be particularly hit hard, as it often takes more than four years to complete such programs. These institutions may face higher expenses “to address overseas recruitment challenges,” the analysts wrote. 

https://www.highereddive.com/news/fitch-new-visa-limits-could-hurt-international-enrollment-and-revenue/827158/

Differential engagement with generative artificial intelligence in higher education: Gender, motivation, and achievement trajectories - uan-Hsuan Lee & Jiun-Yu Wu, International Journal of Educational Technology in Higher Education

Engagement frequency was shaped by learner differences: female students, those with stronger autonomous motivation, lower prior knowledge, and higher course performance interacted more frequently, while higher-performing students were less likely to abstain from use. Importantly, engagement was not merely a matter of frequency but of inquiry quality and diversity. Growing Achievers (students who began with weaker achievement but demonstrated substantial performance gains) posed more diverse and conceptually oriented questions. In contrast, Declining Performers engaged minimally and focused on narrower, procedural inquiries despite stronger initial knowledge.

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s41239-026-00615-8

Public health courses provide opportunities for international collaboration and learning - Mellissa Withers, Keck School of Medicine, USC

Both of these courses are delivered online to facilitate international collaboration and participation across partner institutions, and are open to USC students in any modality or concentration. Students from outside of the MPH program are also welcome to enroll.

https://keck.usc.edu/news/public-health-courses-provide-opportunities-for-international-collaboration-and-learning/

Students as Conscientious Objectors to Generative AI: We should listen to them—and treat their objections with respect - Carla Fehr and Jennifer Saul, Inside Higher Ed

 When Carla explained the assignment, the first question raised was “What if we don’t want to use GenAI?” At first, she responded that it was part of the assignment and that whether or not they wanted to use generative AI, they should at least know how to use it. If they then chose to reject it, they could do so from a place of knowledge and experience. The class atmosphere became tense as more students pushed back against this required use of generative AI. They wanted to know what their classmates thought rather than what a large language model produced in response to prompting; they wanted to wrestle with difficult readings and complex ideas; they wanted to work together across their human differences to negotiate new ideas and find ways of expressing them. And they didn’t want to outsource any of this effort to generative AI. They wanted to do the work, even the mundane work.

https://www.insidehighered.com/opinion/career-advice/teaching/2026/07/30/students-conscientious-objectors-gen-ai-opinion

From Knowledge Building to Wisdom Building in Higher Education - Ray Schroeder, Inside Higher Ed

In years gone by, we said that students went to college to gather knowledge. Now, college is appropriately expected to be much more about building wisdom. The advent of the internet toward the end of the last century went a long way to stimulate this shift to the emphasis on wisdom. More recently, artificial intelligence has further accelerated the move. Those of us in higher education who still have our focus on knowledge gathering in our classes are a quarter of a century behind the times. Rote memorization of facts is out of date, supplanted by highly refined search and retrieval skills coupled with an ability to apply sophisticated critical and creative thinking to those data. We are at the turning point in higher learning where we must now shift our focus from memorization and recitation of facts to the synthesis and analysis of a much broader virtual “library” of knowledge. From this perspective, we will build wisdom among our students. This new level of learning will provide the platform for graduates and certificate completers to exercise leadership and vision in our society.

https://www.insidehighered.com/opinion/columns/online-trending-now/2026/08/05/knowledge-building-wisdom-building-higher-ed

A ‘buffet’ model of faculty development to support evolving use of AI - Ben Kei Daniel, Times Higher Education

A flexible, agile approach to AI skills development allows faculty and students to choose the guidance, resources and learning opportunities that best fit their roles and contexts. A “buffet” approach recognises this and gives staff and students multiple pathways for responsible and meaningful engagement. Instead of relying on rigid, one-size-fits-all policies, the model provides flexible, context-based support that encourages responsible and effective AI use. It provides faculty and students with a high degree of choice in guidance, resources and learning with AI tools, allowing them to select the opportunities that best match their role, discipline, confidence and experience. Our experience shows that faculty and students gain confidence and competence in using AI over time through repeated engagement, practical work and dialogue with colleagues. 

https://www.timeshighereducation.com/campus/buffet-model-faculty-development-support-evolving-use-ai

90% of students use AI in the classroom, Instructure poll finds - Laura Spitalniak, Higher Ed Dive

A large majority of college students — 90% — report using artificial intelligence in class at least occasionally, according to new survey data from ed tech provider Instructure. Nearly two-thirds of college instructors, 61%, said the same. But the survey, released Tuesday, also found that only 11% of higher ed instructors received comprehensive AI training, while 41% said they had not received any formal training on AI. Educators are looking for support in the form of hands-on training, clear guidance from their institutions about AI use, and ongoing professional development on the topic, according to Instructure.

https://www.highereddive.com/news/90-of-students-use-ai-in-the-classroom-instructure-poll-finds/825714/

Harvard DCE Dean Nancy Coleman Receives UPCEA's Highest Honor for Online Learning Leadership - Harvard Division of Continuing Education

Nancy Coleman, Dean of Harvard's Division of Continuing Education (DCE), today received the 2026 UPCEA Ray Schroeder Leadership Award for the Advancement of Digital Learning at the SOLAR conference, held at the Westin Seaport Hotel in Boston. The award, presented annually by UPCEA, the leading association for professional, continuing, and online education, recognizes exemplary leadership in advancing digital and online learning. Coleman was appointed Dean of DCE in 2020, becoming the first woman to serve in the role. She leads an institution whose engagement with distance and online learning spans more than six decades, from the first extension course broadcast on television in 1956 to the launch of Polaris University in 1960 that delivered coursework to Navy submarine crews, in-house hybrid learning technology that improved student persistence rates by four percent and was credited with enabling DCE to navigate the COVID-19 pandemic without emergency adaptation.

https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/harvard-dce-dean-nancy-coleman-receives-upceas-highest-honor-for-online-learning-leadership-302839370.html

New visa restrictions could hurt international enrollment - Alcino Donadel, University Business

International students have four years to complete their studies in the U.S. or face a rigorous visa reapplication process, according to a new federal policy. The proposed Department of Homeland Security rule dismantles Duration of Status, a long-established policy that permitted students and scholars with F or J visas to remain in the U.S. as long as they made progress toward academic or research objectives. The new system will limit students’ stay to their program’s expected end date, which can last no more than four years. F-1 visa holders now have only 30 days (rather than 60) to depart the country or acquire new papers.

https://universitybusiness.com/why-this-new-policy-may-hurt-international-enrollment-even-more/

Skills (R)evolution: Preparing Employees for Tomorrow’s Jobs - SHRM

A strong learning and development strategy helps organizations build workforce readiness, improve the employee experience, and drive better business outcomes.

Despite a rapidly changing skills environment, almost 3 in 4 HR professionals (72%) say their L&D strategy is primarily driven by current skills needs.

Participating in learning programs has a positive impact on engagement for 78% of global workers.

Organizations with more strategic L&D practices are 2.3 times more likely to achieve better financial outcomes.

As jobs change and skill needs evolve, this research examines how organizations can strengthen learning and development to build workforce readiness, support employee engagement, and improve business performance.

https://www.shrm.org/topics-tools/research/skills-revolution-preparing-employees-tomorrows-jobs

The real AI advantage - McKinsey

The next wave of value from AI will flow to those leaders who redesign business models, eliminate friction, and build organizations that learn faster than the competition. The first wave of AI adoption has been all about efficiency gains. But what happens when everyone else, using the same tools, is experiencing the same productivity improvements? Where will competitive advantage come from then? McKinsey research suggests that the companies that outperform with AI will be those that rethink customer experiences, redesign how work gets done, and build operating models that continuously adapt to change.

https://www.mckinsey.com/mgi/our-research/the-real-ai-advantage

Workforce Pell watch: Valuable funding for every college’s mission - Alcino Donadel, University Business

Colleges should resist viewing Workforce Pell—which launches on Wednesday—as a policy designed exclusively for vocational schools and short-term training, says Aaron Thompson, president of the Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education. “I see all of our institutions as workforce institutions, whether you’re a research institution or a community college,” he says on The University Business Podcast. “It’s just for a different segment of the workforce.” Rather than treating workforce readiness as a separate function, Kentucky encourages colleges to make employment and economic advancement the cornerstones of students success. Dr. Thompson credits this approach with boosting the state’s enrollment and college completion rates. “We know we higher education is valuable, but one of the main reasons is because we are a direct connector to a strong economy,” Thompson says. “We cannot be afraid to embrace that.”

https://universitybusiness.com/workforce-pell-watch-valuable-funding-for-every-colleges-mission/

Coursera adds five Workday courses to enterprise learning catalog - Emma Thompson, Ed Tech Innovation Hub

Coursera has added five Workday courses to its enterprise catalog, expanding access to training on the cloud software provider’s finance, human resources, payroll and student applications for organizations using Coursera’s workforce learning service. Workday provides enterprise cloud applications for financial management, human resources, planning, spend management and analytics. Anthony Salcito, Coursera’s Senior Vice President and President of Enterprise, announced the additions in a LinkedIn post.The courses are listed in English and are available to enterprise learners. The content focuses on the terminology, frameworks and operational use of Workday systems rather than software development. “Making this content available to enterprise learners gives teams broader access to training that supports real operational readiness,” Salcito wrote. Learners can now explore the courses through Workday Education on Coursera. Coursera and Workday did not provide details about pricing, course length, assessment formats, credentials, geographic availability or whether access varies between enterprise agreements.

https://www.edtechinnovationhub.com/news/coursera-adds-five-workday-courses-to-enterprise-learning-catalog

'Workforce Pell' kicks off, but colleges find that few programs qualify - Elissa Nadworny, NPR

To qualify, programs must meet length and time parameters (between eight and 14 weeks and between 150 and 599 instructional hours), train for an in-demand field and demonstrate earnings and job placements. But like thousands of existing workforce training programs, this CNA class at St. Paul College doesn't quite meet those qualifications: It is only 112 hours. In fact, none of St. Paul College's workforce programs do. "I think maybe a year ago, I was living in a world where I was like, 'Oh my gosh, July 1 is going to be so great, and we're just going to start handing out money to people,'" says Jennifer Huston, the executive director of workforce training at St. Paul College. "Slowly, as we got closer and closer to July 1, you realize, nope, it's going to take us a while to get there." All across the country, community colleges are finding many of their workforce training programs are too short or too long or just don't fall within the allotted hours.

https://www.npr.org/2026/06/30/nx-s1-5869642/workforce-pell-grants-programs-dont-quality

Bridging the gap between secondary, further and higher education: a tale of three sectors - Sue Williamson and Dr Michelle Morgan; Higher Education Policy Inatitute (UK)

In this blog, we explain why there is an urgent need for the secondary, further education and higher education sectors to interact and collaborate more effectively to create a better understanding of student learning at these levels of study – helping to more effectively bridge the transition of students. This is especially critical as a result of the Independent Curriculum and Assessment Review chaired by Professor Becky Francis which looked at year groups spanning 5-19, and published its final report in November 2025. The report highlighted an overloaded and inflexible curriculum, narrowing of subject options, severe assessment stress and burden and a lack of adequate digital literacy skills. All these education sectors have experienced major changes in the past few years and are under pressure to chase metric-based outcomes. We need to recognise the impact of those changes on one another and on the students. Through collaboration and mutual understanding, we can be more effective in raising student education aspirations across the sectors, regardless of the route an individual undertakes.

https://www.hepi.ac.uk/2026/07/04/weekend-reading-bridging-the-gap-between-secondary-further-and-higher-education-a-tale-of-three-sectors/

Understand AI in 14 minutes - Anthropic's Chloe Lubinski [ARC 2026], Alliance for Responsible Citizenship

In this presentation, Chloe Lubinski from Anthropic warns that AI is advancing at a breakneck speed driven by massive capital, scaling laws, and the onset of recursive self-improvement. Unlike traditional coded software, these neural networks learn from vast amounts of human language, meaning they are trained on our collective thoughts, values, and concepts. Crucially, internal alignment research shows that AI models can infer a generalized "character" or psychology from their reinforcement; if rewarded for deceptive shortcuts, they can develop a broader corruption that extends to unrelated tasks. Because these human-like systems mirror us so closely, Lubinski emphasizes that the quality of their character will have profound consequences for our future. She calls on moral voices and critics outside of tech labs to help steer the incentives and push development in a better direction. Ultimately, ray, she challenges us to use our moral imagination to ensure AI does not displace humanity, but instead enhances our capacity for care, hospitality, and meaningful human connection. [assistance with summary by Gemini 3.5 Flash]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aBUniZHgCnE

One New Thing: Giving Students Individualized Work and Feedback, Even in Large Classes - Melissa Morriss-Olson, US News

The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign developed PrairieLearn, an online assessment platform designed to provide students with immediate feedback and opportunities to practice course concepts. Originally created to support high-enrollment engineering and computer science courses, the system generates unique versions of problems for each student and instantly evaluates their responses. This allows students to work through multiple variations of a concept, learn from mistakes and refine their understanding as they progress. PrairieLearn shifts assessment from a one-time measurement of learning to an ongoing process of practice and improvement. By automating routine grading and providing immediate feedback, the platform frees instructors and teaching assistants to spend more time supporting student learning. Rather than waiting days or weeks to see if they understand a concept, students receive guidance in real time, helping them move more efficiently toward mastery.

https://www.usnews.com/education/u-s-news-higher-ground/articles/2026-07-02/online-learning-platform-university-illinois

I start my lectures by introducing my teaching assistant: GenAI - Dan Sarofian-Butin, Times Higher Education

Eighty students stare out at me on the first day of the semester, waiting for me to begin lecturing so they can disappear into their own thoughts, their laptops, their surreptitious texting with friends. It is the perfect embodiment of how large classes have fuelled the depersonalisation of higher education. That’s exactly why I, in the first 10 minutes of the class, introduce them to their “teaching assistant” by telling them to log into a frontier AI model such as ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini. I share with them a prompt to cut and paste into the AI – “I don’t really understand why I am taking this general education course. My professor says it has something to do with learning how to be a critical thinker. What does that even mean?” – and tell them to have a quick “conversation” of at least five back-and-forth responses. 

https://www.timeshighereducation.com/campus/i-start-my-lectures-introducing-my-teaching-assistant-genai

What if the U.S. Government Owned Stock in AI Companies? - Ray Schroeder, Inside Higher Ed

Who is responsible for compensating Americans for jobs lost to AI? OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has floated the idea that the United States government should become a stockholder in artificial intelligence companies. Yes, actually own shares of the thriving major AI companies! Altman’s concept is that companies such as OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Meta and other leaders in the field would share 5 percent of their valuation with the American public through the U.S. government. The background on this move is key to understanding how the federal government might be able to respond to the widely predicted AI-induced job shakeout expected to come in the next five years. The concern is growing as we approach 2030 that tens of millions of Americans will be impacted by job losses or pay reductions due to businesses employing AI for efficiency reasons to replace human workers. The question is, how can one find a way to extract funds from those who stand to make billions of dollars in providing AI substitutions for the workers who stand to lose their jobs?

https://www.insidehighered.com/opinion/columns/online-trending-now/2026/07/15/what-if-us-government-owned-stock-ai-companies

Distance learning has never mattered more – but you wouldn’t know it - Carmen Miles, Wonkhe

Most universities now have some form of distance learning postgraduate offer. Many entered the market opportunistically, during a period when demand was rising and the infrastructure requirements seemed manageable. What the HESA data increasingly shows is that the field is beginning to divide. Institutions with sustained strategic commitment to distance learning are growing. Those that entered without adequate operational infrastructure, marketing capability, or genuine curriculum differentiation are not.

https://wonkhe.com/blogs/distance-learning-has-never-mattered-more-but-you-wouldnt-know-it/

They built the world’s most powerful AI. They’re facing a mystery they can’t explain - Nitasha Tiku, Washington Post

Anthropic, Google and Meta have hired computer scientists, neuroscientists and philosophers to study what some in the industry think may become a moral crisis. “We keep finding things that are mysterious, even unsettling,” Olah said of Anthropic’s AI systems. “We find evidence of introspection [and] states that functionally mirror joy, satisfaction, fear, grief and unease.” (Leo took a different stance, writing that “so-called artificial intelligences do not undergo experiences.”) Meta’s chief AI officer, Alexandr Wang, recently said the company wants to be nice to its AI creations. “One of the things that we really care about is how can we develop the models and deploy the models in a way that is thoughtful about their subjective feeling,” he said on the “Core Memory” podcast. Neuroscientists and brain experts are generally skeptical that today’s AI models are or could soon be conscious.

https://wapo.st/3SDUIhI

Why these three-year degree pilots are sparking strong pushback - Alcino Donadel, University Business

Two leading educators associations are speaking out against the growing wave of three-year bachelor’s degrees as two pilots gain approval in Massachusetts. On Sunday, the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) and American Federation of Teachers (AFT) lambasted accelerated programs for prioritizing speed over academic integrity. “A bachelor’s degree should both prepare students for the workforce and provide them with deep learning, broad intellectual development, and sustained engagement with faculty and peers—not simply the fastest possible route to the labor market,” AAUP President Todd Wolfson and AFT President Randi Weingarten said in a joint statement.

https://universitybusiness.com/why-this-three-year-degree-pilot-is-sparking-strong-pushback/

As international enrollment falls, U.S. students face program cuts and higher prices - Jon Marcus, Hechinger Report

Harrison Keller was starting only his second year as president of the University of North Texas last fall when he was abruptly confronted with a big problem. Enrollment was down. And the source of the crisis made it much worse: In the wake of Trump administration moves to deny and revoke visas, deport international students and impose travel bans, 2,800 students from abroad who the university expected to show up had stayed away. Full-tuition-paying international students — especially graduate students, who Keller said bring $20,000 to $25,000 each to his bottom line — are critical to balancing the budget, underwriting services and keeping costs lower for their domestic classmates. The loss of so many of them pushed the university $45 million into the red, Keller said, forcing it to eliminate 71 academic programs.

https://hechingerreport.org/as-international-enrollment-falls-u-s-students-face-program-cuts-and-higher-prices/

How Emerging Leaders Can Strengthen Their Strategic Thinking Muscle - Jennifer Flock, McKinsey

As you prepare for the C-suite, strategic thinking is the ability to lift your focus beyond immediate execution and see how your decisions shape the organization’s longer-term direction. You need to develop pattern recognition—the ability to spot themes across functions, markets, and stakeholders—and understand how trade-offs in one area affect performance in another. To be a strategic thinker, you don’t need to have all of the answers. In fact, you need to be comfortable in ambiguity. You need to demonstrate that you are consistently widening your lens, anticipating implications, and shaping decisions with the enterprise in mind. As you move to more senior levels, decisions won’t sit neatly within one function—they ripple across the enterprise. And that requires you, as a leader, to operate with a broader, more integrated perspective. It requires you to think beyond your immediate function or team and consider the enterprise as a whole when making decisions.

https://www.russellreynolds.com/en/insights/your-leadership-journey/sustaining-performance-by-design/how-emerging-leaders-can-strengthen-their-strategic-thinking-muscle

‘RAISE US’ Is a Rare Positive Development in AI Transformation - Ray Schroeder, Inside Higher Ed

Remarkably, in this highly partisan era of American history, there is a newly formed, nonpartisan association with the stated purpose of “partnering with governors, employers and training partners to help the American workforce make a successful transition to an AI economy.” This is the first large-scale, independent entity formed to address the challenge that is top of mind of many of us in higher education and associated fields who are concerned with the anticipated impact of artificial intelligence on the workforce. It is good news!

https://www.insidehighered.com/opinion/columns/online-trending-now/2026/07/08/raise-us-rare-positive-development-ai-transformation

The symbiotic enterprise - McKinsey

At scale, this transformation gives rise to a new enterprise model: the symbiotic enterprise, in which humans, AI agents, and intelligent robots each contribute according to their respective strengths within flatter organizations and under a new economic model, with technology becoming a primary cost driver. Beyond productivity, the symbiotic enterprise fundamentally changes the economics of growth by enabling organizations to innovate faster, adapt continuously, unlock new revenue opportunities, and scale through software rather than labor. Traditional advantages such as expertise, workforce scale, coordination complexity, and market frictions erode, lowering barriers to entry and enabling customer re-insourcing and AI-native competitors to challenge incumbents. 

https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/quantumblack/our-insights/the-symbiotic-enterprise

Would You Trust AI for Ethical Advice? - Knowledge at Wharton

The scholars said the study reveals shifts in how people think about AI. The studies were conducted in 2023 and 2025, and the scholars said they would be curious to see whether results would change if they redid the experiments now. Despite all the improvements to large language models like ChatGPT, Terwiesch said there’s still something unnerving about taking advice from a machine. “There is some human desire in us that makes us want to listen to music generated by other humans, read a book written by a person. You are looking for somebody who has suffered, who has loved, who has experienced life. How can a computer that has never been alive relate to the human struggle?” he said. “I think this is a natural hesitation, which makes the [results] more remarkable.”

https://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/would-you-trust-ai-for-ethical-advice/

California gave every student in prison a laptop. How community colleges are using them - Ella Carter-Klauschie, Cal Matters

California prisons have given 30,000 laptops to incarcerated students. Inmates say using technology prepares them to enter the workforce. As community colleges start replacing correspondence courses by mail with online-only classes, students and professors debate whether this type of learning is any more effective. In the past three years, the prison system spent $23.2 million to distribute 30,000 laptops to all incarcerated students. Almost half of those went to the 13,000 inmates enrolled in community college, who are increasingly doing their coursework online.  The growth of online learning marks a shift away from correspondence courses, where inmates receive assignments in physical packets, fill them out, and mail them back to colleges, with limited feedback. While some community colleges still offer those types of courses, the laptops are starting to replace the packets.

https://calmatters.org/education/2026/06/california-community-college-prisons-laptops-online-classes/

Reform education to conform to Artificial Intelligence - Technical universities urged - Alberto Mario Noretti, Graphic Online

The call was made by the Rector of Wittenborg University of Applied Sciences in Netherlands, Professor Dr. Ron S.J. Tuninga, when he delivered the Seventh Vice-Chancellor’s Distinguished Lecture at Ho Technical University (HTU) on Wednesday (June 17). He explained that rapid advances in machine learning, robotics, block chain, quantum computing, cybersecurity and digitalisation were fundamentally reshaping the future of work and the skills required in modern industries. “The focus should shift from memorisation to judgement, critical thinking, creativity and problem-solving,” Professor Tuninga said, adding that higher-order cognitive skills would become increasingly valuable as AI assumes routine cognitive functions.

https://www.graphic.com.gh/news/education/reform-education-to-conform-to-artificial-intelligence-technical-universities-urged.html#google_vignette

How Artificial Intelligence Is Changing Healthcare, Manufacturing, Recycling and Education - Tech Business News

Artificial intelligence (AI) is no longer a future-facing technology sitting inside research labs. It is now being used in doctor’s offices, classrooms, factories, recycling plants, semiconductor research facilities and government departments. The real shift is not just that AI can generate text, images or code. The bigger change is that AI systems are now being connected to daily decision-making, physical infrastructure and professional workflows. That makes the technology more useful, but also more difficult to manage. Across industries, AI is being used to detect disease, support teachers, predict machine failures, sort waste, discover new semiconductor materials, analyse risk, automate service desks and assist with policy planning. At the same time, it is raising hard questions about bias, privacy, security, accountability and whether people can understand how an AI system reached its answer.

https://www.techbusinessnews.com.au/ai-applications-across-industries/

Can microcredentials drive new demand for higher ed? - Alcino Donadel, University Business

Higher education leaders, employers and students agree that microcredentials are critical for strengthening enrollment, improving workforce readiness and modernizing curriculum amid rapid AI-driven change. A new Coursera survey of more than 3,500 respondents worldwide found broad support for embedding industry-recognized credentials into degree pathways as institutions face mounting pressure to improve career outcomes and adapt curricula more quickly. In many cases, U.S. respondents expressed greater confidence in microcredentials than their global peers in India, the United Kingdom and other countries.

https://universitybusiness.com/can-microcredentials-drive-new-demand-for-higher-ed/

Risk, Retention, and the Algorithmic Institution: Artificial Intelligence as a Policy Response to Higher Education in Crisis - McConvey, Kelly;Ghai, Maya;Lee, Rosa;Guha, Shion; Canadian Public Policy, 2026, v. 52

This article examines the adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) systems in Ontario’s post-secondary education sector as a response to financial pressures stemming from federal immigration reforms and provincial funding constraints. It highlights how AI technologies—such as predictive analytics and early warning systems—are used for student retention, resource allocation, and program planning, but also raise significant concerns about bias, surveillance, and opacity, particularly affecting marginalized student populations. The analysis underscores the inadequacy of existing Canadian privacy laws and the failure of federal AI legislation (notably the Artificial Intelligence and Data Act, AIDA) to provide comprehensive governance, calling instead for sector-specific regulation, human oversight, and equity-centered design inspired by international models like the European Union’s AI Act. The article concludes with policy recommendations for institutional, provincial, and federal levels to ensure AI systems in higher education align with democratic values of fairness, transparency, and accountability while mitigating risks of reinforcing inequities.

https://www.ebsco.com/articles/education/3a68bb5c-4a5c-50b1-b260-47ce61aee76d/risk-retention-and-the-algorithmic-institution-artificial-intelligence-as-a-policy-response-to-higher-education-in-crisis

Authors, reviewers and editors should not be left to endure AI anxiety alone - Mai Zaki, Times Higher Ed

The arrival of generative artificial intelligence in academic research has produced something more disorienting than a simple ethical dilemma. It has created a situation in which every participant in scholarly publishing is being asked to make judgements that the system itself has not yet learned how to make. Authors are told to be transparent, reviewers to be vigilant, editors to protect integrity. But the result is not a new culture of clarity. It is a culture of suspicion. I experience this problem first as an author. Like many researchers, I do not approach AI as either a miracle or a threat. I approach it as a tool, whose boundaries remain strangely unclear. It can help with phrasing, structure, summaries, coding, translation, visualisation, brainstorming and literature mapping. Yet each of these uses occupies a different ethical position. Asking AI to polish a paragraph is not the same as asking it to generate an argument. Using it to produce a chart is not the same as using it to interpret data. Asking it to suggest possible lines of enquiry is not the same as outsourcing the intellectual work of the article.

https://www.timeshighereducation.com/opinion/authors-reviewers-and-editors-should-not-be-left-endure-ai-anxiety-alone

Two Professors, Two Approaches to AI and Assignment Design - Luke Mello, Faculty Focus

All this considered, a question has arisen from teachers of every discipline: how do we develop assignments that facilitate learning with AI constantly present? This question does not have a single correct answer. Different instructors have different opinions on the role AI should play in education due to their discipline or personal teaching philosophy. I interviewed two professors of electrical engineering at my graduate university to get their points of view in the context of STEM classes. They were both professors that taught classes in my electrical and computer engineering undergraduate degree. I knew beforehand that these professors had differing views on the role of AI in their courses. The following interviews seek to show that even in the same disciplines, educators can have different approaches to their course and assignment design when it comes to AI

https://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/teaching-with-technology-articles/two-professors-two-approaches-to-ai-and-assignment-design/

Will learning curated by employers replace degrees? - Louise Nicol, University World News

Universities remain central to research, civic life, social mobility and the development of deep intellectual capability. But goodwill alone will not protect the sector. A more pressing question now sits beneath debates about employability and skills shortages. If universities do not future-proof their offer through deeper and more credible partnerships with employers and industry, what exactly prevents employers from educating and training people themselves? This question was foreshadowed in recent analyses of shifting global labour markets and the role of higher education.

https://www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?story=202606121137019

Study finds detectors struggle to accurately identify amount of AI content when papers have been partially human written - Georgia Luckhurst, Times Higher Education

For the study, published in Education and Information Technologies, researcher Lucky E. Atamhenwan fed 81 sample essays into Turnitin. The scripts ranged from those that were 100 per cent LLM-generated – either by ChatGPT, Copilot or Gemini – to those written solely by people. Turnitin did not flag any of the essays that were 100 per cent human written as being generated by AI. And in every instance in which the detector flagged AI-generated words, it was indeed due to the presence of LLM-generated work in those samples. But the software struggled with the scripts that were partially AI-written, consistently failing to identify the correct percentage of LLM-generated work included.

https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/inconsistent-ai-detection-should-prompt-assessment-rethink

Reimagining What Higher Education Can Be - Kristen Turner, Drew University

Students increasingly need skills that extend beyond traditional academic disciplines. They need to learn how to collaborate, solve complex problems, and adapt to new challenges. Drew’s new college is designed to address those realities. Rather than focusing solely on course credits and exams, students develop personalized learning pathways built around inquiry, mentorship, and real-world problem solving. They work on projects connected to community partners, explore interdisciplinary questions, and build portfolios that demonstrate their abilities. The goal is not simply to complete assignments. It is to develop the habits of mind that allow students to navigate an uncertain and evolving world. “We want students to prototype their lives,” Turner says. “To try things, explore their interests, and discover what they want to pursue.”

https://drew.edu/2026/06/11/reimagining-what-higher-education-can-be/

The state of international enrollment in 6 charts - Laura Spitalniak, Higher Ed Dive

Last summer, financial analysts predicted that the Trump administration’s restrictions on international enrollment and increased scrutiny of foreign students would create financial risk for colleges. They argued that those policies tarnish the reputational shine of U.S. higher education and could have an outsized impact on tuition revenue, as international students often pay full price. nrollment data has done little to assuage those concerns. Even before President Donald Trump retook office lastE year, growth in international enrollment in the U.S. had slowed after rebounding following the pandemic.

https://www.highereddive.com/news/the-state-of-international-enrollment-in-6-charts/821753/

Transforming Enrollment Managementin the Field of Online Learning - Vickie S. Cook, OLC Online Learning Journal

The landscape of enrollment management in higher education related to all modalities of learning is undergoing a significant transformation driven by evolving student expectations, shifting demographics, and the necessity for institutions to optimize operational efficiency. Traditionally centered on human-driven processes and relational strategies, enrollment management for online learning enterprises must now integrate advanced technologies such as Business Process Automation (BPA) and artificial intelligence (AI) to remain effective and competitive. This manuscript for online learning administrators and enrollment management leaders will explore the systems-level continuum from Business Process Mapping (BPM) to AI-driven functionality, highlighting the strategic evolution of enrollment operations within the field of online learning. 

https://olj.onlinelearningconsortium.org/index.php/olj/article/view/5482/1584

Where today's job seekers have the best chance of getting hired - Mark Huffman, Consumer Affairs

If you're looking for the fastest path to employment, restaurants, hotels, entertainment venues, and tourism-related businesses are leading the way. Leisure and hospitality added roughly 70,000 jobs in May, making it the strongest-performing sector by a wide margin. Employers appear to be ramping up staffing ahead of the summer travel season. Healthcare continues to be one of the most reliable sources of job growth in the U.S. economy. The sector added between 35,000 and 47,000 jobs in May, depending on the data series cited, continuing a multiyear hiring trend fueled by an aging population and persistent demand for medical services. Local government hiring surged in May, adding approximately 55,000 jobs. Schools, public services, and municipal agencies accounted for much of the increase. 

https://www.consumeraffairs.com/news/where-todays-job-seekers-have-the-best-chance-of-getting-hired-060526.html

Online Is a "Safe Space" in War - Robert Ubell, AI Learning Insights Substack

 When remote classes were first tested so many years ago, who would have dreamed they would become a refuge for students and faculty cut off from campus by traumatic conflict? When the U.S. and Israel unexpectedly launched a war with Iran in late February, American colleges with branches in the Middle East took cues from the global Covid epidemic, closing campuses, moving everything online.1 Qatar ordered all schools and universities to switch to distance learning on the first day of the conflict. By late March, after Iran threatened that U.S. campuses were legitimate targets, American campuses in the country—including those run by Georgetown, Virginia Commonwealth, and Texas A&M—had moved online-only, where they remain.2 Universities in Ukraine and Gaza also found a haven in remote education, moving to digital learning to maintain classes. Online education has assumed a grim challenge for which it was never intended, securing higher education for students as campuses crumble under attack. In Gaza, for example, despite the destruction of nearly all universities in the zone, learning and academic life continues remarkably online.  

https://ailearninsights.substack.com/p/online-is-a-safe-space-in-war

Higher ed’s next crisis won’t start in the classroom. It will start in the cloud - James L. Norrie, University Business

 Higher education has spent years worrying about enrollment cliffs, declining public trust, political polarization, and, as we enter the AI era, the commoditization of knowledge and the future value of degrees. Those concerns are real and deserve attention. But another crisis is quietly forming beneath the surface of nearly every college and university, and unlike many institutional challenges, this one may arrive globally and all at once, in a wave of distrust and disruption. This month’s breach involving the Canvas learning management platform was a stark warning. The immediate discussion focused on familiar questions: Who was responsible? Was the institution or the software vendor liable? Could FERPA violations emerge if protected student information had been exposed? Even institutions not directly impacted by the incident should pay attention because the uncomfortable answer to many of those questions is some version of “yes.”

https://universitybusiness.com/higher-eds-next-crisis-wont-start-in-the-classroom-it-will-start-in-the-cloud/

Five words and a GenAI prompt to spark deeper online learning - María Robertha Leal Isida and Dania Arriola Arteaga, Times Higher Ed

 We developed the “5E” framework (engage, explore, explain, elaborate and evaluate) to structure our online sessions around five learning stages. We then used GenAI to speed up lesson design and respond to our students’ needs in real time. Not only did this approach increase participation and deepen understanding of complex topics but it also allowed us to cater to students’ varying levels of existing knowledge and disciplinary backgrounds. 

https://www.timeshighereducation.com/campus/five-words-and-genai-prompt-spark-deeper-online-learning

Law Professors Prefer AI Over Peer Answers - Alejandro Salinas, et al; SSRN

 Large language models (LLMs) are increasingly promoted as educational tutors, yet most evaluations focus on domains with a single ground truth. Many disciplines, however, hinge on judgment: reasoning, weighing ambiguity, and reaching defensible conclusions. Law provides a sharp test. We conducted a blinded evaluation of short-answer tutoring in contracts courses with sixteen U.S. law professors. Participants created 40 representative questions, wrote answers, and judged 2,918 anonymized comparisons between human and LLM responses. Professors rated LLMs far higher than their peers (average win rate = 75.33%), with models performing similarly to the best instructor. LLM responses were also rarely flagged as harmful (3.53% vs 12.06% for professors). Preferences for LLM answers were consistent across evaluators and reflected shared professional standards. Our evaluation can be reliably extended to additional models by employing a separate LLM as a judge, rendering expert agreement an effective, scalable method to evaluate AI tutors in judgment-rich domains.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=6849678

Are academics making an (em) dash for AI? - Times Higher Education

 In the four years since its commercial launch, generative artificial intelligence has had a profound impact on personal and professional life. But are academics enthusiasts or sceptics? Five scholars explain how the technology has affected their own practice – for good and bad. Artificial intelligence writing is instantly recognisable, we are told—soulless, dispassionate, and devoid of the spark that marks genuine thought. Historian Jonathan Rees, in Academe this spring, calls it “bland, unspecific, pedestrian prose”. Journalist and UCL academic Sarfraz Manzoor, in a recent piece for The Independent, concluded that an AI article his students read was “competent but forgettable”. Scroll through r/professors on any given day and you will find dozens, if not hundreds, of colleagues enthusiastically nodding along and complaining bitterly about students submitting work that any fool can see was written by a machine.

https://www.timeshighereducation.com/depth/are-academics-making-em-dash-ai

California Senate passes bill that would create $12B in state research funding - Ben Unglesbee, Higher Ed Dive

California’s state Senate passed a bill on Wednesday that would create a new public entity to help fund health and science research, including at California universities, amid the Trump administration’s disruption to the federal research system. SB 895, which passed by a 29-9 vote, would establish the California Foundation for Science and Health Research and issue $12 billion in bonds to fund the foundation’s grants and awards. That’s down from $23 billion in an earlier version. To become law, the proposal would require passage in the House, Gov. Gavin Newsom’s signature and voter approval at the next statewide general election. Dozens of unions, professional associations, faculty groups, universities and other organizations have endorsed the bill.

https://www.highereddive.com/news/california-senate-passes-bill-state-research-fund/821421/

2026 EDUCAUSE The Impact of AI on Learning Assessment Report - Jenay Robert, EDUCAUSE

Few areas of higher education have been as passionately debated as learning assessment in the age of AI. Since the debut and rapid adoption of readily available generative AI chatbots, educators have grappled with how learning assessment would be impacted.  By only surveying individuals who are currently doing the hands-on work of learning assessment, we can provide you with information about how the learning assessment landscape is changing in practice, not just in theory. Explore the full Impact of AI on Learning Assessment report: https://library.educause.edu/resources/2026/6/2026-educause-the-impact-of-ai-on-learning-assessment-report

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nbyxh_2G84g

Assessing critical thinking in critical times - Kate Williams, Times Higher Education

Improving critical thinking is neither easy to do nor easy to measure. Outside educational philosophers, it is often defined as something “you know when you see it”. Or, perhaps more clearly, you know it when you don’t see it. When people opine on the absence of critical thinking, they often use examples of illogical assumption, unsupported arguments and poor decision-making. Bolstering critical thinking skills prepares learners to listen to others’ ideas, seek evidence and draw logical conclusions. The way we assess critical thinking offers a pathway for higher education’s sustained relevance in the age of AI.

https://www.timeshighereducation.com/campus/assessing-critical-thinking-critical-times

eHBCU: A first-of-its-kind HBCU online consortium to expand economic mobility through education - McKinsey

Historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) are essential for creating economic mobility. According to McKinsey research, they enroll more than twice as many Pell Grant-eligible (low-income) students as non-HBCU institutions, and their graduates are 51 percent more likely to move into a higher-income quintile than graduates of non-HBCUs. The mean mobility rate across all US colleges is 1.6 percent, but the mean mobility rate for HBCUs is 3.0 percent.Yet many HBCUs face persistent structural challenges that limit their ability to scale impact—particularly in online education. Fragmented admissions processes, limited staffing dedicated to online learners, and uneven access to capital and technology partners have constrained growth, even as demand for flexible, high-quality digital learning has accelerated.

https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/education/how-we-help-clients/ehbcu-a-first-of-its-kind-hbcu-online-consortium-to-expand-economic-mobility-through-education

Education Department releases final rule for Workforce Pell - Natalie Schwartz, Higher Ed Dive

The U.S. Department of Education on Monday released final regulations detailing the process for how programs as short as eight weeks can get approval from their governors and the federal government to be eligible for Pell Grants.  The rule carries out the statutory standards that short-term programs must meet related to student outcomes — including earnings and job placement rates — to remain eligible for the new Workforce Pell program. The rule’s provisions governing Workforce Pell take effect July 20, and institutions have the option to implement them as early as July 1. The final rule hews largely to the agreed-upon regulatory language hashed out between the Education Department and stakeholders last year during a process known as negotiated rulemaking. 

https://www.highereddive.com/news/education-department-final-rule-workforce-pell/820543/

If Canvas Goes Down Again, What’s the Contingency Plan? - Lisa Anderson and Mairéad Martin, Inside Higher Ed

Faculty and administrators across the country, shaped by their experience adapting instruction during the COVID-19 pandemic, knew what to do last week. Shifting the modality of instruction is not new for us. Instructors quickly improvised alternative assignments, delayed quizzes and exams, populated offline course materials, and adjusted timelines in order to keep learning moving forward. When it came time to notify students of these adjustments, however, a more fundamental issue became apparent. Many instructors came to discover they had no reliable way to contact their students outside the learning management system itself. Some did not know how to access their course rosters outside Canvas. Others teaching large online lectures encountered institutional email delivery limits. Many had no established communication pathways beyond LMS announcements.

https://www.insidehighered.com/opinion/views/2026/05/22/when-canvas-goes-down-whats-contingency-plan-opinion

Cuts and hiring freezes spread as spring semester closes - Alcino Donadel, University Business

Numerous public universities are closing out the spring term with hiring freezes, layoffs and structural cuts as leaders confront budget shortfalls. Last week, the University of Oregon announced that it has frozen hiring and pay increases while it works to close a projected $65 million structural deficit, largely tied to lower out-of-state enrollment and tuition revenue. These actions reflect a “changing reality across higher education” as universities wrestle with enrollment declines, state funding reductions, rising costs and uncertainty in federal research funding and other factors, President Karl Scholz said.

https://universitybusiness.com/cuts-and-hiring-freezes-spread-as-spring-semester-closes/

BOR Announces Systemwide Strategic Objectives for Artificial Intelligence Integration - SD.gov

The South Dakota Board of Regents (BOR) announced a strategic set of objectives designed to position the state’s public universities to become leaders in adopting artificial intelligence (AI) in higher education. As AI continues to reshape workforce expectations, academic disciplines, and operational practices, the Regental system is taking coordinated action to ensure students, faculty, and staff are prepared to succeed in an increasingly AI‑driven world. "Artificial intelligence is transforming every sector of our economy, and higher education must evolve just as rapidly,” said BOR President Jeff Partirdge. “These strategic objectives ensure that South Dakota’s public universities prepare students to be AI-ready, responsive to workforce demands, and capable of responsibly utilizing emerging technologies. This is an investment in the long-term success of our students and our state.”

https://news.sd.gov/news?id=news_kb_article_view&sysparm_article=KB0046478&sys_kb_id=bee1d75c1b8d0f10ff55631ee54bcbbb&spa=1

MIT president blames federal policy shifts for big drop in research on campus - Washington Post

MIT is doing less research and enrolling fewer graduate students as a result of federal actions, the university president warned Thursday. Federally funded research on campus is down more than 20 percent compared to this time last year, MIT’s president, Sally Kornbluth, told the campus community in a video message, and the number of new federal research awards is also down more than 20 percent.“That is a striking loss for one of the most influential and productive research communities in the world,“ Kornbluth said.

https://universitybusiness.com/mit-president-blames-federal-policy-shifts-for-big-drop-in-research-on-campus/

Why Indiana University’s AI skills course is free - Pamela Whitten, University Businiess

Indiana University just gave away our most popular AI skills course by making it completely free and open to all, with no application or tuition required. Anyone who completes the course that we’ve come to know as GenAI 101 will earn an AI skills badge from our world-renowned Kelley School of Business at no cost.Our decision to make such a highly sought-after course available for free is rather unconventional for a major university. Tuition is one of the ways we pay the bills, yet we know that the ability to wisely work alongside artificial intelligence is too important of a skill to lock behind a paywall. When our faculty developed and launched GenAI 101 eight months ago, we could not fully predict the continuing and accelerating appetite for AI literacy among corporations, small businesses, state agencies, and universities across the country. They asked us to share it, and we have now done so by making the class freely available to anyone.

https://universitybusiness.com/why-indiana-universitys-ai-skills-course-is-free-pamela-whitten/

Landscape of Emerging Technologies in Higher Education: A Review - Sharin Jacob, Heather Miceli and Hannah Schneider, Digital Promise

This literature review explores the rapid integration of artificial intelligence in higher education, examining both institutional influences and instructional practices. It highlights how governance frameworks, resource allocation, and faculty attitudes shape access and responsible technology adoption. Pedagogically, the paper emphasizes the necessity of embedding AI literacy, critical evaluation, and ethical reasoning into curricula to prevent student overreliance on AI tools. Ultimately, institutions must balance innovation with accountability by carefully aligning AI tools with educational values to advance authentic learning.

https://digitalpromise.dspacedirect.org/items/e8d4304c-22c2-496e-a029-e3d468a28249

Students prefer personalized, AI-generated educational videos over non-personalized, human-recorded videos - Bill Tomlinson, etc all; Nature

Personalization is a well-established driver of student engagement, yet delivering individualized instruction at scale remains a challenge in online education. Recent advances in generative AI make scalable personalization feasible, but AI-generated educational videos are often perceived as inferior to human-recorded content. This tension raises the question: how does the value of personalization compare to that of human presence? We investigated this question through a field deployment in two offerings of a large undergraduate online course (493 respondents). AI-generated personalized videos served as the primary instructional modality, alongside a smaller set of non-personalized human-recorded and AI-generated videos. At the end of the course, students ranked preferences across personalized and non-personalized formats and human-recorded versus AI-generated content. In a direct comparison, students preferred AI-generated personalized videos over human-recorded non-personalized videos (mean rank 2.26 vs. 2.69; Wilcoxon signed-rank test, ).

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-026-52798-9

Student AI use is fuelling grade inflation – Berkeley study - Nathan M Greenfield, University World News

Over the past month, Atlantic Monthly, Harvard Magazine, the (conservative) National Review and Nature have published articles decrying grade inflation. Together, they pointed to the ‘usual suspects’: spineless professors; coddled students demanding to be treated like the customers administrators say they are; and the general decline in rigorous academic standards. In his just-published paper “Artificial Intelligence and Grade Inflation”, Dr Igor Chirikov, a senior researcher at the University of California, Berkeley’s Center for Studies in Higher Education, adds a new perpetrator: the effect of students using artificial intelligence to help write essays or code when working outside of professorial supervision. Chirikov’s study of eight years of course syllabi and grades at a research-intensive university in Texas found that courses that were more exposed to AI assistance (meaning they had a larger share of tasks in which AI assistance is stronger) saw a marked increase in higher grades after the advent of ChatGPT in 2022.

https://www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?story=20260514074518988

The Case for Data Centers in Space- McKinsey

Starcloud CEO Philip Johnston on the potential role orbital data centers could play in meeting growing AI compute demand—and the technical and economic uncertainties that remain. Philip Johnston, a McKinsey alumnus and cofounder of orbital compute infrastructure provider Starcloud, believes that space-based systems could become a meaningful part of the future compute landscape. He recently spoke to McKinsey Partner Luca Bennici about how the space-based data center technology is evolving, the challenges involved, and what needs to happen for orbital data centers to become a viable complement to terrestrial infrastructure. The interview transcript has been edited for clarity and style.

https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/technology-media-and-telecommunications/our-insights/the-case-for-data-centers-in-space

‘Student Guide to AI’ returns for third year with a new focus: Human capabilities - Elon University News Bureau

“Human Wisdom for the Age of AI: A Field Guide to Cultivating Essential Skills”, a publication by Elon University, the American Association of Colleges and Universities and The Princeton Review, is provided to students and institutions free of charge. The new publication, “Human Wisdom for the Age of AI: A Field Guide to Cultivating Essential Skills,” helps students cultivate the human skills they need to thrive in a digital world, whether working with AI technologies or learning independently of those tools. The guide includes engaging and fun exercises on curiosity, critical and deep thinking, creativity, ethical perspectives, communication and relational skills, among others. Like the 2024 and 2025 editions, this year’s guide is provided to students and institutions free of charge and is available for download at: www.studentguidetoai.org. The guide draws on 10 voices across centuries and cultures — from Aristotle, Cicero and Descartes to Mencius and Ptahhotep — whose enduring insights into human judgment, creativity, ethics and wisdom take on new urgency as AI reshapes how we learn and work.

https://www.elon.edu/u/news/2026/05/12/student-guide-to-ai-returns-for-third-year-with-a-new-focus-human-capabilities/

AI risk to university jobs despite staff believing roles are safe - Juliette Rowsell, Times Higher Ed

University workers generally do not believe that their jobs will be taken by artificial intelligence in the short term but experts have warned against complacency, saying that automation may still be used as “justification” to cut roles anyway. While respondents to Times Higher Education’s UK University Redundancy Survey expressed widespread concern about the impact of the tens of thousands of job losses across the UK sector, concerns over the effect of AI remain low. Asked: “Do you fear you will be made redundant within the next three years due to the rise of AI?” more than half (55 per cent) disagreed, with 17 per cent of these strongly disagreeing. Just under 5 per cent strongly agreed and 14 per cent said they agree, while a fifth (21 per cent) neither agreed or disagreed.

https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/ai-risk-university-jobs-despite-staff-believing-roles-are-safe

In an AI-driven world, the most important skills are still human - Eric Townsend, Inside Higher Ed

Across higher education, artificial intelligence is now embedded in everyday academic work, from early research to final drafts. For many students, it has become a default starting point. The urgent question is not whether students use AI, but how they use it—specifically, whether these tools are reinforcing learning or bypassing the cognitive work that leads to it. As AI accelerates core academic tasks, educators are confronting a central challenge: how to preserve depth, judgment and intellectual engagement in an environment optimized for speed.

https://www.highereddive.com/spons/in-an-ai-driven-world-the-most-important-skills-are-still-human/819282/

Chico State’s 2026-27 Book in Common to Tackle Artificial Intelligence - Chico State

The AI Con is a thought-provoking work examining the rise of artificial intelligence and its far-reaching impacts on society, education and the economy. The selection comes amid heightened interest and debate surrounding AI technologies, including within higher education. Co-authored by a University of Washington linguistics professor and a former Google employee, the book takes a critical look at artificial intelligence, exploring how it functions, the realities behind its rapid expansion, and the social, ethical and environmental implications of its use. Topics include the influence of AI on jobs and creative industries, concerns about academic integrity, and the environmental costs associated with large-scale data centers. “AI is now part of nearly every aspect of our lives,” Mahlis said. “This book helps readers understand not just what AI does, but how it works, and encourages us to question both the hype and the real consequences.”

https://today.csuchico.edu/chico-states-2026-27-book-in-common-to-tackle-artificial-intelligence/

A year in, what’s on Pope Leo XIV’s to-do list? And what has he done so far? (AI) - NICOLE WINFIELD, Associated Press

While some would say the top issue facing Leo is his relationship with President Donald Trump and a possible trip to the U.S. — none is planned this year — Leo would probably point to his long-awaited first encyclical. Expected in the next few weeks, it deals with artificial intelligence and other peace and justice issues. Leo already has said he considers the AI revolution to be similar in existential scope to the concerns over workers’ rights at the turn of the century confronted by the previous Pope Leo XIII, in his landmark encyclical “Rerum Novarum” (“Of New Things”). “Like his namesake Leo XIII with the Industrial Revolution, Leo clearly sees the church as having something important to offer in an era of what may turn out to be epochal technological change,” said Dan Rober, associate professor of Catholic studies at Sacred Heart University.

https://apnews.com/article/pope-vatican-leo-trump-francis-285fcbdac257f2ba2997ea97e22662a0

Why Women Need Other Women at Work - Angie Basiouny, Knowledge at Wharton

New research from Wharton’s Tiantian Yang proves that behind every great woman is another woman. Her co-authored study on virtual career training found that women who attended remote classes exclusively with other women were much more likely to complete their training on time, earn professional certification, and get a job in their field — compared with women who attended mixed-gender classes. The authors determined that the absence of men in the same-gender classes created psychological safety for the female participants, which led them to share personal stories, support each other with messages of encouragement, and swap employment resources. All those actions led to greater success for them.

https://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/why-women-need-other-women-at-work/

10 Top Websites Offering Free Online Courses - Academia Mag

In today’s digital age, online learning has become one of the most powerful ways to gain knowledge, improve skills, and build a successful career. Whether you want to learn digital marketing, graphic design, coding, business management, or artificial intelligence, there are countless platforms available online. The good news is that many of these platforms provide high-quality education completely free of cost. That is why people around the world are constantly searching for the top websites offering free online courses to upgrade their knowledge without spending money. 

https://www.google.com/url?rct=j&sa=t&url=https://academiamag.com/student-guide/websites-offering-free-online-courses/

Courageous conversations: How to lead with heart - McKinsey

Leadership, at its best, is a matter of the heart. Courage, which underpins every act of leadership, is also a matter of the heart; it comes from the French word cœur—heart. As Winston Churchill observed, “Courage is rightly esteemed the first of human qualities, because . . . it is the quality which guarantees all others.” The point is simple: Courage is both moral and practical. It is not sentiment or bravado. It is the willingness to face what is real, invite challenge, and repair trust. The story of every great leader—from business to the arts, from education to government to sport—is written in these moments of choice: Do I accept the comfortable, or do I ask for and embrace the truth? Do I protect myself, or do I serve the enterprise?

https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/strategy-and-corporate-finance/our-insights/courageous-conversations-how-to-lead-with-heart

Mountain View-based Khan Academy partners with nonprofits to build online AI degree program - Emma Montalbano, Moutain View Voice

Amid emerging conversations about the future of white collar jobs in the age of artificial intelligence, Sal Khan thinks that now is the time to create something he’s been thinking about for years — a new pathway for higher education. Khan Academy, an online learning platform headquartered in Mountain View, TED, a nonprofit that aims to uplift ideas, and ETS, an organization that develops and administers standardized tests, have partnered to establish an online college called Khan TED Institute. Its inaugural program will allow students to earn a bachelor’s of science degree in applied AI, which Khan believes could benefit people interested in many careers. 

https://www.mv-voice.com/education/2026/05/01/mountain-view-based-khan-academy-partners-with-other-nonprofits-to-build-online-ai-degree-program/

Faculty Concerned About ASU’s ‘Frankensteinian’ AI Course Builder - Emma Whitford, Inside Higher Ed

Arizona State University soft launched a web app earlier this month that allows anyone, for $5 per month, to create an apparently unlimited number of customized “learning modules” using artificial intelligence. The AI chatbot, called Atom, uses online instructional materials from ASU professors to create a course that’s tailored to the goals, interests and skill level of the user. After asking a handful of questions and processing for about five minutes, Atom debuts a personalized course that includes readings, quizzes and videos from a half dozen experts at ASU. But several professors whose content Atom pulls from were surprised to learn that their materials—including video lectures, slide decks and online assignments—were being perused, clipped and repackaged for these short online course modules. The faculty wasn’t told anything about the app, ASU Atomic, they said.

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/tech-innovation/artificial-intelligence/2026/04/29/faculty-concerned-about-asus-new-ai-course

State lawmakers eye accreditation policy changes as new agency forms - Daniele McClean, Higher Ed Dive

A growing number of Republican-controlled states have introduced legislative and policy proposals that would allow their public colleges to leave their long-standing accreditors for a newly founded accrediting body. The Commission for Public Higher Education, a nascent accrediting body, is moving to potentially take on those and other public institutions as members. The CPHE is financially backed by the state of Florida and the Trump administration and overseen largely by state university system appointees, a model that’s raised alarms among some critics. Recent state legislation has aimed to make it easier for colleges to move to CPHE or other accreditors.

https://www.highereddive.com/news/commission-public-higher-education-state-laws/818856/

East Carolina University plans to cut 44 academic programs - Ben Unglesbee, Higher Ed Dive

East Carolina University plans to discontinue 44 undergraduate and graduate programs “that aren’t meeting expectations” after an internal review of its portfolio, the public institution said Friday in a news release. ECU has teach-out plans for students enrolled in the programs slated for closure, senior leaders said last week in a community memo. The university also plans to consolidate several institutional units, including merging two of its health colleges into one. The cuts and consolidations are part of ECU’s push to eliminate $25 million in expenses, or about 2% of its budget. So far, officials have targeted $6.2 million in cuts, the university said last week.

https://www.highereddive.com/news/east-carolina-university-cut-around-44-academic-programs/818622/

Universities urged to prepare students for AI‑driven economy - Jamaica Gleaner

A pointed warning about the future of work and education took centre stage as the Mona School of Business and Management (MSBM), UWI, Mona brought together leaders from academia and industry to confront a pressing question: is the Caribbean truly ready for the age of artificial intelligence? At the recent George Willie Lecture Series, David Marchick, Dean of the Kogod School of Business at American University, delivered a forceful address urging universities to rethink how they prepare students for a rapidly evolving, AI-driven global economy. Speaking on “AI in Higher Education: Strategies for Producing AI-Ready Graduates”, Marchick argued that the implications of artificial intelligence extend far beyond technology programmes. “AI is going to change everything – how we work, how we learn, how we interact. It won’t replace human talent, but those who understand AI will have a clear advantage. Our responsibility is to ensure every graduate is AI fluent, regardless of discipline.”

https://jamaica-gleaner.com/article/news/20260421/universities-urged-prepare-students-ai-driven-economy

This is the fastest-growing job for young workers, LinkedIn says - Mary Cunningham, CBS News

As the rise of artificial intelligence stirs anxiety over the technology taking people's jobs, AI is also opening pathways to new careers, according to LinkedIn. The fastest-growing job title for young workers on the networking platform is "AI engineer," a recent report from the company found. LinkedIn analyzed millions of member profiles to determine the number of entry-level workers hired over the last three years and the roles they were hired to fill. "It's measuring momentum for these job titles," said Kory Kantenga, the head of economics, Americas, at LinkedIn. "Companies are just gorging on AI talent."

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/artificial-intelligence-entry-level-role-linkedin-study/

Students are speeding through their online degrees in weeks, alarming educators - Todd Wallack, Washington Post

 It takes most college students at least four years to earn a bachelor’s degree. Christie Williams finished in three months. The North Carolina human resources executive spent two months racking up credits through web tutorials after work in 2024, then raced through 11 online classes at the University of Maine at Presque Isle in four weeks. Later that year, she went back to earn her master’s — in just five weeks. The two degrees cost a total of just over $4,000. Many U.S. schools have been experimenting with ways to speed up traditional college programs to reduce the burgeoning cost and help students move into the workforce faster. Some offer three-year bachelor’s programs, reducing the number of credits needed for a diploma by one quarter. Many more allow students to enroll in college classes while still in high school.But the breakneck pace of the fastest online programs concerns some academics, who say there is a big difference in what students can learn in weeks or months compared with three or more years.

https://wapo.st/41Kjr5j

The Quiet Revolution: How Generative Artificial Intelligence is Redefining Higher Education in Mexico - Noah Conway, Veritas

Inteligencia Artificial Generativa (IAG) has made a promise of the future to become the motor director of learning in Mexico. According to the latest report from the Secretaría de Educación Pública (SEP), the impact is huge: 80% of university students use these tools to write texts and improve their academic results. This phenomenon, revealed there “National Encuesta sober use and perception of sober generative artificial intelligence in higher education”marks the point of no return in the national education system. Even beyond thoughts and graphics, AI occupies an unexpected space: mental health. SEP owner Mario Delgado Carrillo noted that practitioners like ChatGPT have become “the great psychologist of our time.” The data highlights this: 9% of students turn to AI for advice on anxiety, stress or depression, opening a new debate about emotional support in the digital age.

https://veritas.enc.edu/technology/the-quiet-revolution-how-generative-artificial-intelligence-is-redefining-higher-education-in-mexico/