Budgets, AI, Government: Three Challenges for Higher Ed

It has become increasingly clear that higher education is facing three distinct and world-changing challenges. Budgets/enrollment, Artificial Intelligence, and changes in federal policy all exist as largely separate issues. The confluence of these at one time and our lack of coherent reaction does not position us for success, but there is hope.

The Challenges

Budgets/Enrollment: Many campuses, including my own, are facing tremendous challenges with budgets and enrollment. Part of this was known in advance. Conversations about the enrollment cliff, a drop in the college age population especially in more rural areas, have been ongoing for a decade. Covid compounded this challenge because it gave students who have traditionally been place bound numerous high-quality options for online degree completion. We are all competing in an online marketplace whether we want to be or not. We have seen a rash of closures of small liberal arts colleges, especially in the midwest and northeast, and the consolidation of some state schools in response to this crisis. This has made the competition for students inside and outside universities even more intense. Outside enrollment issues, there are budget challenges at many campuses due to inflation. In the crudest sense, everything has gotten 20-30% more expensive in the last five years, including personnel, but “revenue” in tuition and/or state-funding has not expanded at the same rate. Broadly, this is the primary concern for senior executives at impacted campuses.

Artificial Intelligence: The arrival of ChatGPT 3.5 in November 2022 was a shock to the system of the world and to higher education. Seemingly overnight what students needed to learn changed and how we provide instruction needed to change. Every firewall placed in front of large language models has been breached as they now, with adequate prompting, are capable of performing tasks (read assignments) in nearly every field of study. Artificial General Intelligence which is able to complete entire jobs with minimal supervision and accomplish tasks autonomously is on the horizon in 1-5 years depending on who is doing the estimating. Even if that number is ambitious, the conversation about “if” has significantly diminished and now we are mainly talking about “when.” This is the primary concern of people invested in teaching and learning. Faculty developers (like me) and people in the classroom have seen assignments long associated with the development of critical thinking and disciplinary proficiency taken over in whole or in part by these models.

Changes in Federal Policy: The Trump Administration has wasted no time in disrupting long-held practices in higher education. The Executive Order banning Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion has been broadly interpreted to apply to federal grants through the National Science Foundation and other agencies. The government has opened investigations into institutions with large endowments. The “Dear Colleague” letter sent on 2/14 seemingly imperils student access to Pell grants and perhaps even federal loans if institutions engage in any sort of racial preference or DEI work. Numerous other changes like the authorization of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to extract students from campus, the rollback of trans rights, and whatever comes next all undermine long-held assumptions about the interaction between higher education institutions and the government. These are the primary concerns of research universities and flagship institutions with more than one billion dollars in endowment. This is also a concern for advocacy groups on and off campus invested in diversity work and minority rights.

All of these challenges are potentially fatal to higher education as we know it. There are some unique problems posed by this confluence we need to address.

First, these challenges are largely unrelated. Sure federal policy could make the other challenges harder and just recently AI has a new MAGA problem. But for those of us in higher education we have to acknowledge and deal with all of these challenges seemingly independently. It is a tall order.

Second, the perceived salience of these challenges pits us against each other. The colleague who just lost a million dollar NSF grant thinks the administration isn’t taking “the most important issue” seriously. The colleague who teaches ethnic studies and doesn’t know if they are going to have a job in a month or if a chunk of their students will be extracted from campus thinks the campus isn’t taking “the most important issue” seriously. The program, which teaches largely online in order to capture enrollment outside the geographic area, sees how AI has undermined every assignment in the curriculum and thinks their peers aren’t taking “the most important issue” seriously. The campus leadership wants faculty and staff to all serve as recruiters to the campus and is sure they aren’t taking “the most important issue” seriously. The problem is–we are all right, and all wrong.

The path forward

A lot of the solutions to these challenges are outside our control. Try as we might, getting California to do something about housing or compelling AI labs to calm down a bit so we can catch up are not levers we can pull, even at the highest levels of post-secondary education. So, what can we control?

First, faculty and staff, have to be part of the solution in all of these areas, but the first step is to stop fighting each other. The threats to higher education are outside campus and the solutions are us working together to provide meaningful programs for students, work with Artificial Intelligence, and navigate a path forward through new Federal policy. Stop blaming your colleague down the hall because they care about something different than you do, you are both right to care about your thing. Start working together to understand each other. It may be that different teams on campuses work on different problems, and that is fine, we need diverse solutions to a diverse problem set, but we have to stop blaming each other to get there.

Second, while the challenges are mostly independent, the solutions are probably closely tied together. Survey data strongly suggests students are concerned about the impact of AI on their career paths. Providing curriculum that is discipline specific and addresses artificial intelligence throughout helps address the challenges of AI while providing an attractive option for potential students. Similarly, providing AI education for alumni who already have positive brand affiliation with an institution where they earned a degree brings in a group of students from a different pool which alleviates budget pressure and shows the workplace emphasis the Federal (and some State governments) seem focused on.

These are all incomplete solutions, but the good news is–we all work with some of the smartest people we know. If we can trust each other and move forward in good faith there are paths forward. Things seem overwhelming right now, but it isn’t because your colleague down the hall is focused on the “wrong” thing, it is probably because they perceive a different exigency than you and are acting on it in the best way they can. As we have been writing for two years, these challenges are opportunities to repurpose higher education for a new world. Let’s learn more about how we are all confronting these challenges and move forward in good faith together.