By Mark Daley
Publication Date: 2026-01-15 17:06:00
For the past five years, higher education has been in a seemingly endless state of disruption.
In early 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic led to a rapid mass shift to emergency distance learning. As teachers transitioned to unfamiliar digital learning environments, they sought to replicate classroom learning online. As restrictions were lifted, many institutions pushed for a “return to normality,” as if pre-pandemic standards of education were ideal.
Now, given the disruption of generative AI, we are seeing a similar desire to hold on to an idealized vision of the modern university. AI has disrupted long-established forms of assessment and at the same time initiated a return to older assessment models in the interest of “academic integrity”.
If students pursuing higher education believe that the goal is to pass rather than learn, then student misuse of generative AI technologies is nothing more than a rational act by a rational agent.
For a meaningful university education…
