Builders: Designing the post-AI university

The gales of creative destruction have been unleashed but much of higher education remains focused on the destruction, seeking to repair and restore perceived loss from generative AI. Zach and I have argued that this nostalgia—this romanticized past—warps the conversation and keeps us anchored to a “Golden Age” that never really existed. Unlike the floodwaters of a hurricane, AI leaves a wake of ruin but also the tools for a way out.  

I’ve come to focus on the creative part of this phrase. Rather than nostalgia, I am embracing the role of builder. For the first time in my 20 years in higher education, I can safely say that I have been invigorated to create something new. Not just assignments but new reasons for teaching, new modes of instruction, and a new purpose. It’s exciting. We are the first generation in a long time that has the chance to build new versions of higher education. 

It’s been nearly three years since the launch of ChatGPT. Its rapid spread across higher education has upended learning, teaching, and the institution itself, something Zach and I have covered for the past three years on this blog, our podcast, and elsewhere. In higher ed, generative AI is many things: it behaves as a classic market disruptor; it levels the skills between the elites and everyone else; it exposes things that have long been broken; and it is breaking things in its own right. 

So what does building look like in practice? In my department, we are asking ourselves: what is the point of all of this? Why are we doing this? What are we teaching and why? We are starting to find answers together. For example, most of us are renewing our teaching and learning goals and from that creating new teaching practices, types of content, and assignments with and without AI. New assignments that leverage the unique capabilities of generative AI—such as role-playing—bring novelty, experimentation, and new possibilities for instructors and students. This fall, Zach as Director of Faculty Development launched a campus-wide AI Curriculum Challenge. It gives departments time and money to build curriculum from the ground up.

The relationships I have forged with colleagues in my department as we build what’s next make showing up at the office more purposeful and meaningful. We don’t agree on everything—our dispositions toward AI and our teaching philosophies vary widely—but we’re talking about the purpose of higher ed, about teaching and learning, and about what we want the modern university to be. That’s a welcome shift.

Building is not something 21st-century America does, nor does it have positive connotations. Across the country building is seen with suspicion. I study energy systems, and let me tell you quickly: building the energy infrastructure required to meet climate targets and laws and rising energy demand is hitting roadblock after roadblock. 

Still, if higher education is to have a future in this century, with all the rapid changes happening all at once, from demographic cliffs, budget cuts, declining public support, federal hostility, and generative AI, we will have to embrace a new identity as faculty, staff, and administrators: builders.