Reclaiming Purpose

CHAPTER 6What Is a University to Do?

“What should we be doing?” and “Shouldn't we be doing more?” These are the two questions I keep hearing from presidents and boards of trustees in what have become almost weekly calls. Artificial intelligence (AI) is everywhere. Students are using it in ways both sanctioned and not. Faculty are experimenting and often complaining about it or demanding outright bans. Institutions and systems are announcing enterprise licenses with one large language model provider or another, often with more fanfare than planning for what they will do with the technology. The workforce, already affected by economic uncertainty and political volatility, is being reshaped by AI, affecting the upstream work of universities to produce workers and create opportunity and increasingly leaving it on shaky ground. “What to do?” indeed.

There is some irony that the very institutions devoted to understanding and explaining the world have been caught somewhat unprepared for the most transformative technology since the printing press. Across industries, AI is refashioning the fabric of work, creativity, and human interaction. Banks use it to assess risk, hospitals to diagnose, law firms to review contracts, and artists to generate images once thought to require the ineffable spark of imagination. Our universities will be no exception. The question is not if higher education will change in response to AI, but how, and whether it can do so in ways that reinforce its deepest ...