📝 usncan Note: What Happens To College When AI Outsmarts Us?
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Students Moving Into Hope College, August 2025
Hope College
Every fall, something sacred happens on college campuses. Cars pull up. Parents unload mini-fridges… and some emotions! Students step into dorm rooms that smell of fresh paint and possibility. And just like that, the cycle begins again — another academic year, and another batch of 18-year-olds take their first steps on the journey from childhood to adulthood.
But this year, something feels different. There’s an uncertainty in the air — not just about what the year ahead may hold, but about the future of teaching and learning in general. Higher education is threatened by rising costs, eroding trust, and culture wars. And now a new threat has emerged. A technological one.
There’s plenty of debate about what AI may or may not mean for society. But as a college president, I can tell you what it’s already doing to higher education. And it’s not good.
The Cheating Crisis
James D. Walsh is an investigative journalist known for deep investigative reporting. He spent two years working undercover at a casino doing research for his first book. His latest subject: American college students. This time, he set out to answer a pressing question:“What’s the real story with AI on college campuses?”
This spring, he published his findings in a long feature article for New York Magazine. The title of the article was, “Everyone Is Cheating Their Way Through College.” The subtitle was, “ChatGPT has unraveled the entire academic project.”
If that sounds like an overstatement, then think about it this way. The primary academic goal of most students is to pass all of their courses. And for most courses, passing depends upon the production of some sort of original content. This isn’t high school; we’re typically not testing students to see what they’ve memorized. The core assignment is always some version of, “Now that you have interacted with this content and reflected upon it, show me what you’ve learned by producing some content of your own in response.” But AI already happens to be much better at that particular activity than most humans could ever be.
It’s not as though students haven’t noticed. Walsh quotes one student who says that they literally can’t think of a single classmate they know who doesn’t use ChatGPT to complete their assignments. And increasingly, professors simply cannot tell the difference. A study published in the UK showed that when professors were grading a paper that had been entirely AI generated, they only caught it three percent of the time.
The Death Of Thinking
When students outsource their thinking to machines, they short-circuit the very process that a college education is meant to cultivate. Learning isn’t just about arriving at the right answer – it’s about the journey; it’s about wrestling with a tough question.
Despite AI being such an obvious threat to teaching and learning, most colleges have welcomed it as a friend. It has been treated much the same as any other emerging technology, something we need to be “up” on, lest we fall behind.
But few seem to be looking far enough ahead on this path to see where it leads. AI leads to a future in which the only thing we’re really teaching students is how to use it. The only thing we’re really grading them on is how skillfully they can collaborate with AI. And let’s be honest, if that’s what we’re doing, the most qualified teacher and evaluator of those skills is probably AI itself.
Which leaves us with two options. Option one is to accept our fate with quiet reservation, and prepare for a future in which AI becomes both the subject we teach and the teacher who teaches it. Option two is to articulate a full-throated, passionate defense of why computer teachers should be rejected in favor of human teachers, and why, in the context of higher ed, artificial intelligence should be rejected in favor of the old-fashioned kind.
Most college administrators haven’t even considered this second option, for a very simple reason: they have concluded that AI is unstoppable. If that’s true, then they see little point in trying to resist the inevitable. Better to adopt the attitude of, “If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.”
What A College Is Meant To Be
The problem with that attitude is that it overlooks the foundational reason colleges were created in the first place. The earliest institutions of higher learning were built to train ministers. Over time, the purpose of college expanded to cultivate an educated citizenry, prepare skilled workers for emerging industries, and promote the advancement of knowledge.
But at their core, colleges have always been about creating an alternate universe – an intentional oasis from the broader society. A place set apart from the “real world,” not to escape it, but to prepare for it. This suspension of reality is not accidental; it’s purposeful. Within the walls of this incubator, students are given the space to wrestle with ideas, develop character, and grow in ways that would be difficult – if not impossible – outside of it.
So if colleges were supposed to be a counter-culture all along, then the role AI plays in the culture at large is somewhat beside the point. If anything, the ubiquity of AI only reinforces the importance of protecting our colleges by being some of the most human-centric places on the planet. As this becomes increasingly rare, it will also become increasingly desirable — sort of like those resorts that advertise being signal-free (no Wi-Fi or cell service) as a selling point. Sometimes, people are willing to pay more to be given less, because they know that less is what they really need and want.
I think that’s true with colleges. The fear is that taking a stand in favor of human learning, environments will make colleges irrelevant. But the truth is exactly the opposite. This might be the only way for our relevance to be restored. Long before the arrival of AI, the world had already forgotten what colleges were here for — what sort of place we were meant to be. This is our chance to remind them.
The Real Threat – And Our Assignment
A college is a place where learning is authentic, not artificial. A place where curiosity is cultivated, not quenched before it has a chance to grow. A place where knowledge and wisdom are two separate things, and sometimes opposites. A place where the goal isn’t just to pass, but to grow — the place you go to become more fully human.
In the end, the real threat isn’t that AI will out-think us — it’s that we’ll stop thinking altogether.
Our assignment as educators is to make sure that doesn’t happen. And the only way we can fulfill our calling is by making sure that there is at least one place left on earth where humans are forced to think for themselves.
It’s time for colleges to lead again, not by adopting every new tool, but by protecting the ancient ones: conversation, contemplation, and community. Let us be places where thinking still matters. Where being human is still the point.
