✳flâneur — a map of the web's best reading

AI is Destroying the University and Learning Itself

currentaffairs.org · 6,414 words · saved by 1 readers

Students use AI to write papers, professors use AI to grade them, degrees become meaningless, and tech companies make fortunes. Welcome to the death of higher education. Iused to think that the hype surrounding artificial intelligence was just that—hype. I was skeptical when ChatGPT made its debut. The media frenzy, the breathless proclamations of a new era—it all felt familiar. I assumed it would blow over like every tech fad before it. I was wrong. But not in the way you might think. The panic came first. Faculty meetings erupted in dread: “How will we detect plagiarism now?" “Is this the end of the college essay?” “Should we go back to blue books and proctored exams?” My business school colleagues suddenly behaved as if cheating had just been invented. Then, almost overnight, the hand-wringing turned into hand-rubbing. The same professors forecasting academic doom were now giddily rebranding themselves as “AI-ready educators.” Across campus, workshops like “Building AI Skills an

AI is Destroying the University and Learning Itself Originally published in our magazine’s hallowed print edition 2025 Nov/Dec Details Students use AI to write papers, professors use AI to grade them, degrees become meaningless, and tech companies make fortunes. Welcome to the death of higher education. Ronald Purser filed 01 December 2025 in Education I used to think that the hype surrounding artificial intelligence was just that—hype. I was skeptical when ChatGPT made its debut. The media frenzy, the breathless proclamations of a new era—it all felt familiar. I assumed it would blow over lik

Explore this link on the map →

related reading