4 ways higher ed can lead in uncertain times - Elon University

At Elon University, the 2025 President’s Report explores how colleges and universities can respond with clarity and purpose by focusing on what today’s students need to think critically, adapt and lead responsibly. How universities are boosting enrollment and retention

Central to this work is a simple but powerful idea: preparing students not just with knowledge, but with the ability to question, analyze and apply it. In a world defined by uncertainty, students must learn how to think, not what to think, and be willing to take calculated risks as they test ideas, navigate ambiguity and engage with real-world challenges.The report highlights several practical approaches institutions can adopt.

https://www.highereddive.com/spons/4-ways-higher-ed-can-lead-in-uncertain-times/816294/

'Double-edged sword': Montana campuses prepare for AI-driven future - Darren Frey Glendive Ranger-Review

The growing role of artificial intelligence in higher education is forcing colleges to adapt, and Montana campuses are preparing to take a major step with a new AI tool launching as early as May. When Dawson Community College President Chad Knudson attended the March Board of Regents Meeting in Dillon over spring break, a separate meeting held in conjunction with the Regents was part of Montana University System’s Artificial Intelligence Task Force one of the key topics was ChatMT.AI. Knudson stated that ChatMT will be an AI tool rolled out to the Montana University System statewide as a suite of resources focused on streamlining administrative processes. For example, the tool can handle the simple yet time-consuming task of reading a 300-page document and writing a summary, something Interim Director of Academic Affairs and Accreditation Liaison Officer BreAnn Miller said could take multiple hours to complete but only five minutes with the AI tool.

https://www.bozemandailychronicle.com/news/double-edged-sword-montana-campuses-prepare-for-ai-driven-future/article_84b1f767-3899-5c0b-96fc-b122ac2bfb2e.html

The Connected Campus: A Secure, AI-Ready Digital Ecosystem for Higher Education - Alexander Slagg, EdTech

A connected campus supports improved learning experiences, campus operations and overall decision-making by university leadership. While previous iterations of campus technology systems were focused on simply connecting users with resources and each other, the connected campus goes much further, forming a holistic technology ecosystem that drives secure interoperability across systems and resources. “A connected campus depends on several foundational layers working together: resilient wired and wireless networking; cloud and hybrid infrastructure; identity and security systems; and platforms that support learning, collaboration and research,” explains Nicole Muscanell, a researcher for EDUCAUSE. “Increasingly, institutions are also integrating IoT systems, such as smart buildings, energy management and physical safety technologies, into this ecosystem.”

https://edtechmagazine.com/higher/article/2026/04/connected-campus-secure-ai-ready-digital-ecosystem-higher-education-perfcon

How AI may reshape career pathways to better jobs - Justin Heck, Mark Muro, Shriya Methkupally, and Joseph Siegmund, Brookings

Amid much concern about the future of college graduates in the era of AI, workers without four-year degrees face major challenges as well: There are over 15 million of these workers in jobs that are highly exposed to AI. Of those, nearly 11 million are employed in “Gateway” occupations—jobs that have historically enabled workers to build skills and supported transitions into higher-wage roles.  AI is poised to erode the pathways workers use to transition from low- to higher-wage work.  Almost half of the pathways between Gateway jobs and higher-paying “Destination” jobs are highly exposed to AI. Geographically, the highest rates of AI-related pathway exposure are in administrative, clerical, and customer service Gateway occupations in the Northeast and Sun Belt. In order to craft strategies that effectively meet the moment, the field must grapple with a set of urgent questions about AI’s impact on worker mobility.

https://www.brookings.edu/articles/how-ai-may-reshape-career-pathways-to-better-jobs/

‘AI-shaped economy’ now has students rethinking their majors - Matt Zalaznick, University Business

Workforce disruptions caused by generative AI have some students rethinking their majors with one analysis characterizing higher education’s relationship with AI as “both promising and complex.”

More than 40% of bachelor’s degree students and more than half of those seeking associate’s degrees said generative AI has caused them to consider changing their major or field of study, according to a a new Gallup poll.

About one in seven students surveyed at both levels said “preparing for AI and other technological advances is an important reason they enrolled.”

AI is not yet the “primary driver” academic and enrollment decisions, Gallup’s authors contend. They urge higher leaders to ensure students have opportunities to learn the AI skills needed to succeed in a changing workforce.

“These findings highlight growing student attention to how well degrees align with an AI-shaped economy,” the survey concluded.

https://universitybusiness.com/generative-ai-now-has-more-students-rethinking-their-majors/

SDSU's Massive AI Study Finds Frequent Use but Skepticism - Jaweed Kaleem, Los Angeles Times

A poll of 94,000 students, faculty and staff across 22 CSU campuses found nearly every respondent had used AI at some point, but students were still wary of trusting  it and faculty reported negative effects.  The survey, conducted by San Diego State University researchers last fall, shows CSU grappling with how AI is affecting assignments, classroom instruction, competition for jobs and academic integrity. It found nearly every respondent had used AI at some point, with personal use more common than for educational purposes.

https://www.govtech.com/education/higher-ed/sdsus-massive-ai-study-finds-frequent-use-but-skepticism

AI Is Routine for College Students, Despite Campus Limits - Stephanie Marken, Gallup News

New research from the Lumina Foundation-Gallup 2026 State of Higher Education study finds that more than half (57%) of U.S. college students are using artificial intelligence in their coursework at least weekly, including about one in five who say they use it daily. Male students report more frequent AI use than female students, particularly in the case of daily use (27% vs. 17%). By major, students in business, technology and engineering programs are the most frequent AI users compared with those in other fields of study. Rates of AI use are similar among students pursuing associate and bachelor’s degrees.

https://news.gallup.com/poll/704090/routine-college-students-despite-campus-limits.aspx

AI in Higher Education Is Moving From Experimentation to Strategic Integration. Here's What the 2025 Data Shows - Joe Sullistio, Ellucian

When the question is "Are people using AI?" the answers are mostly anecdotal. When the question becomes "How do we integrate AI responsibly and measurably across the institution?" you need strategy, investment discipline, governance, and enablement. Not just tools. Ellucian's new report, Artificial Intelligence in Higher Education: From Widespread Adoption to Strategic Integration, captures this transition in detail, and lays out what institutions need to do next. This is the third consecutive year of the Ellucian AI Survey for Higher Education, and the 2025 State of AI in Higher Education findings mark a clear turning point.

Personal AI use is nearing saturation: 91% of administrators report using AI, up from 84% last year, a relatively modest increase that signals individual adoption is plateauing.

Institution-wide adoption surged: from 49% in 2024 to 66% in 2025, a 17-point jump that signals AI has moved beyond experimentation and into mainstream operational and strategic integration.

Momentum is expected to continue: 88% of respondents expect institutional AI use to keep rising over the next two years.

https://www.ellucian.com/blog/ai-higher-education-2025-survey-findings-move-strategic-integration

‘AI-shaped economy’ now has students rethinking their majors - Matt Zalaznick, University Business

Workforce disruptions caused by generative AI have some students rethinking their majors with one analysis characterizing higher education’s relationship with AI as “both promising and complex.”

Here are the stats:

More than 40% of bachelor’s degree students and more than half of those seeking associate’s degrees said generative AI has caused them to consider changing their major or field of study, according to a a new Gallup poll.

About one in seven students surveyed at both levels said “preparing for AI and other technological advances is an important reason they enrolled.”

AI is not yet the “primary driver” academic and enrollment decisions, Gallup’s authors contend. They urge higher leaders to ensure students have opportunities to learn the AI skills needed to succeed in a changing workforce.

https://universitybusiness.com/generative-ai-now-has-more-students-rethinking-their-majors/

Emotion Concepts and their Function in a Large Language Model - Nicholas Sofroniew, et al; Transformer Circuits

Large language models (LLMs) sometimes appear to exhibit emotional reactions. We investigate why this is the case in Claude Sonnet 4.5 and explore implications for alignment-relevant behavior. We find internal representations of emotion concepts, which encode the broad concept of a particular emotion and generalize across contexts and behaviors it might be linked to. These representations track the operative emotion concept at a given token position in a conversation, activating in accordance with that emotion’s relevance to processing the present context and predicting upcoming text. Our key finding is that these representations causally influence the LLM’s outputs, including Claude’s preferences and its rate of exhibiting misaligned behaviors such as reward hacking, blackmail, and sycophancy. We refer to this phenomenon as the LLM exhibiting functional emotions: patterns of expression and behavior modeled after humans under the influence of an emotion, which are mediated by underlying abstract representations of emotion concepts. Functional emotions may work quite differently from human emotions, and do not imply that LLMs have any subjective experience of emotions, but appear to be important for understanding the model’s behavior.

https://www.anthropic.com/research/emotion-concepts-function

A dual-framework analysis of artificial intelligence adoption in cross-cultural higher education - Zouhaier Slimi & Beatriz Villarejo Carballido, Nature

The integration of artificial intelligence in higher education is increasingly critical as institutions face both opportunities and ethical challenges in its adoption. This study introduces a dual-framework model that combines the Technology Acceptance Model with an AI Ethics Framework, highlighting "Ethical Readiness" as essential for successful AI implementation, and identifies key drivers and barriers to adoption across diverse cultural contexts.

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s44217-026-01415-y

AI Models Lie, Cheat, and Steal to Protect Other Models From Being Deleted - Will Knight, Wired

A new study from researchers at UC Berkeley and UC Santa Cruz suggests models will disobey human commands to protect their own kind. I've had these assertions presented to me as evidence of (take  your pick):  AI is already conscious; AI is evil and will destroy us; AI is capable of lying to protect itself; and other highly anthropomorphized interpretations.  My first thought was, 'Has this behavior been independently verified'?  The Gemini 3 quote is highly suspicious.  it sounds too much like a segment from a cautionary science fiction tale.  LLMs and other flavors of AI are not designed with motivation beyond optimizing their performance in response to human queries/instructions.  Behavioral responses of biological animals with brains were optimized via natural selection to favor self-preservation.

https://www.wired.com/story/ai-models-lie-cheat-steal-protect-other-models-research/

Building Better, Faster: How JKO is Integrating AI to Enhance Online Learning - JKO News

"The integration of AI is not just about speeding up development but also about fundamentally changing how training is built," said Tim Brandon, JKO program director. "The goal is to deliver a more agile and advanced learning experience that is more personalized, less linear and in line with the technology our training audience is already accustomed to.” AI is also being used to monitor real-world events and identify which of the thousands of courses on the platform need updates. The system flags outdated courses, which allows for rapid revisions. As part of its AI adoption, JKO is working with the DDJTE AI Working Group and the Joint Staff J-7 to establish the platform as a central hub for AI-related training and education resources for the Joint Force. 

https://www.jcs.mil/JKO/Latest-News/JKO-Customer-Spotlights/Article/4446233/building-better-faster-how-jko-is-integrating-ai-to-enhance-online-learning/

Meet Claude Mythos : Anthropic’s Powerful Successor to Opus - Julian Horsey, Geeky Gadgets

Claude Mythos, Anthropic’s latest AI model, introduces significant advancements in software development, academic reasoning and cybersecurity, setting a new benchmark for AI performance and functionality.The model excels in identifying software vulnerabilities and solving complex problems, but its dual-use nature raises ethical concerns about potential misuse for malicious purposes. High computational demands and operational costs pose challenges to accessibility, prompting Anthropic to explore techniques like model distillation to improve efficiency and scalability. 

Primarily targeting enterprise-level users, Claude Mythos is positioned to transform industries such as finance, healthcare and cybersecurity, while raising questions about accessibility for smaller organizations.

https://www.geeky-gadgets.com/claude-mythos-ai-model-overview/