Technology is a remarkable thing. For many Americans, the things we do each day are often reliant on some sort of technology - whether that be the computers that power our transport networks, get us online, or transmit information.
In recent years, the world has experienced rapid technological change. Generational advancements in computing have helped create a world where we can connect to nearly anywhere in the world with a device the size of a candy bar.
This sense of connection has helped to transform the education system - providing opportunities for qualifications such as EdD programs online - bringing education to the front door of millions. It has also seen an emergence of new technologies that challenge the status quo - such as artificial intelligence (AI) tools, scarcely seen even a decade ago.
This emergence of new AI tools has become hotly contested in universities and colleges across America. In a recent national survey, questions about the role of AI in education are highlighting what Americans think of AI - and may help to shape future AI policy.
Artificial intelligence is a concept that has existed for decades - with AI research first established as a field in academia in the mid-1950s, at a two-month-long workshop known as the Dartmouth Summer Research Project on Artificial Intelligence.
While the workshop brought together pioneering minds in AI, it has taken many decades for these concepts to evolve and mature into ideas that can be applied in the real world. While AI has often been a field of academic research, it has only truly become mainstream in the 2020s.
Improvements in technology have allowed researchers and entrepreneurs to create and rapidly iterate on a type of AI model known as a large language model (LLM). Trained on vast amounts of data, these LLM models essentially ingest massive volumes of information, which is then used to create a data model that users can interact with.
Companies worldwide, including companies such as OpenAI, Google, and Amazon, are rapidly iterating on AI models that could be used to change the face of education as we know it. While admittedly, AI models have had challenges with accuracy, newer and more sophisticated models are beginning to make their way into the public, with a remarkable ability to rationalize and provide responses to queries.
One challenge often associated with new technology is the difficulty of capturing sentiment before implementing change. For educators, AI has presented itself as a technology that could upend the livelihoods of 1.5 million college faculty members across America. However, it’s not unreasonable to argue that an immediate adverse response has led to universities adopting wildly varying approaches to addressing AI challenges.
For some universities, AI represents an opportunity for improvement - to use technology to expand student services and support to enhance the student experience. For others, AI represents a technological threat to the standards set by educational institutions - a tool that threatens the very fabric of assessment design and course structure.
Understanding how Americans think about AI more broadly is a powerful thing. It allows tertiary institutions to understand the ways and means in which AI is being used in the broader community, helping to align AI usage between other areas of society, such as in the workforce.
Market research is an essential part of modern research. By gathering information in a controlled manner, researchers can gather insights on all sorts of information. In a world where technology is evolving, it can be helpful to adapt existing surveys to include new sections and questions to understand sentiment.
One such survey did just that. To understand the perceptions of AI in higher education, research and policy group New America added questions about AI to their annual survey, known as Varying Degrees. The newly added survey questions around AI aimed to highlight how AI is perceived in higher education - particularly how it is used across various fields, including student support, learning, and postsecondary education.
So, what is America saying about AI in Higher Education? New America’s annual Varying Degrees survey, published in July 2024, provides some insight into sentiment on AI technologies.
The findings paint a skeptical view of AI in higher education - when asked about student use of AI and its perceived impact, some 53% of adults surveyed thought that the usage of AI tools after high school had a negative effect on learning - that is, that AI was a hindrance, rather than a help.
This continued to reflect through other areas of the survey. When asked about staff usage of AI, some 46% of adults thought that using AI tools in education after high school would negatively impact their capacity to help students.
While many Americans continue to value the role that higher education plays, the coverage of AI-related material in Varying Degrees paints a picture of an academic world struggling with the challenge of new technology in a world where nobody is quite sure of what they should do about it.
In a world of uncertainty, what are the next steps for AI in higher education? It’s clear that change is afoot - and with AI models becoming increasingly prevalent, powerful, and cheaper, the higher education sector will have to negotiate with a new reality - one where AI models may reshape what it means to study.
For now, at least, the path appears uncertain. Colleges and universities across America continue to face the challenge of AI - time will tell whether embracing or shunning this new technology is the best way forward for the education sector.
From a summer research project in New Hampshire to becoming a technology that is reshaping the modern technological age, artificial intelligence represents a conundrum for the education sector. What, if any, ways are there that academia can leverage AI to get the most out of students - and if executed successfully, how will that shape the future of learning?
