AI and University

Part 3 of 3- what about creativity and the future?

In the previous two pieces in this series, I outlined both the potential problems and solutions as AI increasingly enters the university space. The mass expansion of the university is simultaneously a good and a bad thing. By granting unprecedented numbers access to higher education, modern society has opened up minds like never before. Yet, with this process, this knowledge has been downgraded as something insufficient in and of itself. Instead, it is a skill to be manipulated, possessed, and put to work for a job.

This is why we are witnessing a current crisis in university systems, where academics are being put to the test. If universities are believed to acquire value only on an economic basis, then why would we place value on what academics do? The core drive of academia is to advance knowledge and thought for its own sake. Not because it is productive or even useful beyond the process of thinking about a thing.

Academics are not machines; as people, we can be lazy, disorganised, and we do not fit neatly into the mould of a capitalist mechanism. Although our modern obsession with measuring output suggests that academics should become extinct as a species, and arguably we are already on the ‘critically endangered’ list, we should think beyond material value if we want to preserve what a university fundamentally should be—a place to think. If a university is not truly a place to think, experiment, and take risks, then it is no longer a university.

Instead, we are producing trade schools en masse. I do not want to say there is anything wrong with a trade school. Trade schools are essential components of any education system, fulfilling valuable purposes for both the economy and the students who attend them. But, and this is crucial, they are primarily not universities. Yet, today, with our relentless focus on ‘skills-based education’ we are uprooting scholastic ideals in place of employability criteria and goals. As if knowing more about Karl Marx could get you a job anywhere outside of the ever-shrinking academy.

As an insecure academic myself, it is far from easy to do my job when every year could well be my last. Unlike what the theory of capitalist competition would suppose, too much uncertainty grinds the academics’ gears to a halt. Universities becoming mass skills factories are not only ultimately detrimental to business (how many jobs can universities really create?), but they are also detrimental to our souls.

So, it is no surprise when student numbers collapse for valuable courses such as English Literature. Some blame the rise of Postmodernism as decaying the very foundations of the humanities. Yet, this strikes me as a silly assertion. For sure, some primarily look through the lens of oppression, colonialism, and race at every question. However, to argue that this has entirely eroded the foundation of the humanities is a gross overstatement. In six years of teaching, in a classroom, I have rarely had a conversation with students focused on cancelling authors, throwing out all morality, or why ‘whiteness is problematic’. Instead, such fears are an elite obsession for a potential problem which is nowhere near as widespread as is often asserted.

Rather, we need to look into values. The study of literature and political theory (my own specialism) has been increasingly marketed and aligned with current value sets. In plain speaking, when we advertise a course, we directly link it to the modern world. Now, I’m not necessarily opposed to that. I do think Hobbes, Rousseau, Locke, Marx, J.S.Mill, and Frederick Douglass all speak important truths and, more importantly, some contentious claims, which remain and shall remain important for future generations.

But before applying their logic to the world, students and academics need to understand the authors themselves. Unless we acquire a deep and learned understanding of the author, misapplication will become rampant, destroying the nuance and importance of the author in the first place. Take, for example, Thomas Hobbes. When I read essays on Hobbes, they almost always refer to him as a ‘Totalitarian’. Yet, they either ignore or are unaware that Hobbes was wary of regular government interference in the lives of the citizenry. Missing from their analysis is the complex interplay between appearing almighty without overexercising that power.

Universities should be leaning into reading for its own sake. Reading has become fashionable, and learning, or at least the act of performatively learning, is emerging as the latest trend. It turns out that the adage in fashion, that what is old will become new again, rings true in academia. Instead of budgets being wasted on yet more health and safety courses or significant new buildings we no longer need, universities should be buying books en masse for first- and second-year undergraduates. We should be feeding their desire to read and avoiding the pitfalls of a possible ‘post-literate’ society emerging.

By prioritising the value of understanding above all others, we can then begin the process of mapping the authors onto the world we live in today. Of course, that becomes difficult to do in a system designed to pass or fail someone. Culture and intellectual thought feed off one another, and if the culture is to ‘be a success’ and to earn a lot of money, then necessarily our intellectual thought will retract risk-taking.

Last friday, I was at a conference delivering a paper at UCL on precisely this topic. I don’t believe AI and creativity can be aligned in the current context of universities. Instead, we will (and I suggest we already are) seeing mass plagiarism annihilating honesty as the foundational system of our educational system. Marking essays this semester, I noticed alarming similarities that extended not just to similar arguments but also to the same authors, and at times, even extremely similar wording. At first, I had a visceral, sickening feeling looking into my screen, but over time, it ended with me feeling drained. Empty. There was nothing left in my emotional locker to give.

The desolation was not simply because of potential fraud, but the sheer similarity of the claims, arguments, and writing. None of it felt original, bad or good; it was a rinse and repeat of what had gone before. I struggled to witness any individualised thinking which would guide students to traditional, innovative, or distinct answers. Instead, it was awash with gross similarities. This problem extends beyond marking frameworks and enters the learning process itself.

If the essay can no longer reflect genuine attempts at understanding, critiquing, and translating knowledge into practice, then it should be retired. The ‘mark’ that a student receives, combined with the fear of failure and AI, produces a toxic combination, undermining genuine learning. Our half-empty seminars, and half-baked essays all saying essentially the same thing tell us this. We need to reinvent the system. If we do not do this, we will produce a generation of graduates unable to think independently. That will be the death knell in the university’s coffin.

I am not a senior member of the academy, and pretty soon I shall be out of it altogether. However, I care deeply not only about the health of the academy but also the students entering it. By clinging to outdated processes and skills-based learning we are harming them far more than ourselves. We are not teaching them to think, rigorously engage, or question themselves. In this world of fast food learning, we are putting them in the microwave and watching them go 'bing’ before sending them out into the world.

We prioritise their feelings of ‘comfort’ and ‘safety’ over a genuine and heartfelt commitment to truth, knowledge, and discussion. There is nothing wrong with being wrong. Indeed, being wrong is often a valuable part of eventually finding the right answer. But we have abandoned those principles and aided opting out by so many students I have now lost count. Some teachers have even considered abandoning group discussions because many students claim to feel anxious about them. Ultimately, this is part of the same fundamental problem—a fear of stepping out into the unknown and seeing what lurks on the other side.

But without ever taking that step, we can never know. We remain shrouded in darkness and attached to our B-, or even B+ if you are fortunate, explanations of the world around us. Gone are the C- days where you agonise and reflect on what went wrong. Gone also are the days of the A+ where the essay does something remarkable that sticks in your head. Here is the death of creativity and risk. Here are the days of bland safety.