Ep. 19 AI in Higher Ed Year in Review (2025)
Nik and Zach review the best and worst of AI in higher ed for 2025. AI and Higher Education: 2025 We unpack the collapse of AI detection, the rise of system-wide AI partnerships like CSU and OpenAI, uneven assessment redesign, growing faculty stratification, and mounting concern that generative AI is hollowing out entry-level knowledge-work jobs. The episode closes by looking ahead to 2026, including model updates, political backlash, environmental impacts, and what higher education faces if the AI bubble bursts.
Nik and Zach’s top five of the year:
Zach Justus, That terrible “Everyone is cheating their way through college” essay
Nik Janos, The Assistant for the Rest of Us
Nik Janos, Builders: Designing the Post-AI University
Zach Justus and Nik Janos, No, The Pre-AI Era Wasn’t that Great (Inside Higher Ed)
Zach Justus and Nik Janos, Why professors are more important than ever in the AI era (EdSource)
Mentioned:
Experts Weigh In on “Everyone” Cheating in College (Inside Higher Ed, May 20, 2025)
Unfixed episode 16: Inside the CSU-OpenAI Partnership
CSU, OpenAI roll out ChatGPT Edu to California college students (Axios, Feb 4, 2025)
OpenAI targets higher education with ChatGPT rollout at CSU (Reuters, Feb 4, 2025)
2025 EDUCAUSE AI Landscape Study: Into the Digital AI Divide (EDUCAUSE, Feb 2025)
AI is Destroying the University and Learning Itself (Current Affairs, Dec 2025)
These Students Use AI a Lot — but Not to Cheat (The Chronicle of Higher Education, 2025)
How AI Is Changing—Not ‘Killing’—College (Inside Higher Ed, Aug 29, 2025)
2025 AI Index Report (Stanford HAI, 2025)
How to Think of AI in Education (MIT Open Learning, July 2025)
Unfixed episode 11: AGI and the Future of Higher Ed: talking with Ray Schoeder
Thoughts and suggestions? Email us at unfixed@meltsintoair.org
You can find the full show notes and our writing at meltsintoair.org