New market demands are pushing small, four-year liberal arts colleges to offer microcredentials, indicating growing momentum across sectors of higher education to elevate workforce readiness within their academic offerings. Chief learning officers at community colleges are leading the charge in expanding non-degree offerings, reporting the highest levels of institutional investment in this area. Meanwhile, large research universities—like the University of Colorado Boulder and the University of Tennessee at Knoxville—are catching up. However, strict faculty governance and curriculum processes and different accreditation standards have caused some liberal arts schools to lag, says Mike Simmons, an associate executive director at the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers.
Saturday, September 13, 2025
Academics must be open to changing their minds on acceptable AI use - Ava Doherty, Times Higher Education
Honest and open-ended conversations over how AI can be productively used in the learning journey are needed, not ChatGPT bans, says Ava Doherty. Students today face a striking paradox: they are among the most technologically literate generations in history, yet they are deeply anxious about their career prospects in an artificial intelligence-driven future. Since the launch of ChatGPT, the rapid advance of artificial intelligence (AI) has fundamentally reshaped the graduate job market. This shift presents unique challenges and opportunities for students, universities and the broader higher education sector.
Friday, September 12, 2025
Navigating the AI Revolution in Higher Education - Alyse Jordan, Frontiers in Education
A systematic review conducted in the first nine months following ChatGPT's release provides valuable early insights into how AI has affected teaching, curriculum design, and assessment practices in higher education. The review identified both benefits and threats of AI integration, offering preliminary evidence to inform institutional policies and faculty practices (Liang et al., 2025). As the authors note, this represents "a first wave" of research, acknowledging how quickly AI systems are evolving and changing educational landscapes.Additionally, in specialized fields such as Mechanical Engineering Education (MEE), AI integration demonstrates unique applications and challenges. Research shows that AI significantly enhances learning experiences through technologies like computer-aided translation and natural language processing, making education more accessible and interactive.
https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/education/articles/10.3389/feduc.2025.1682901/abstract
Research: Teachers now outpace students in K12 AI use - Matt Zalaznick, University Business
In 2025, approximately 85% of high school and college instructors, as well as students aged 14 to 22, say they’ve tested AI, a significant leap from 66% in 2024. Nearly 90% of students report relying on AI for school, up from 77% in 2024, with the top three uses being:
Summarizing or synthesizing information (56%)
Research (46%)
Generating study guides or materials (45%)
Positive attitudes toward AI’s role in education (43%) also outpaced negative attitudes (37%) in 2025, a 3% increase from 2024.
Thursday, September 11, 2025
Insights on today’s labor market: Uncertainty, agentic AI, and more - McKinsey
It’s Labor Day in North America, a day to recognize and celebrate the contributions of workers across the continent—and also reflect on the continued uncertainty and rapid change in today’s labor market. In a recent episode of McKinsey Talks Talent, Indeed’s chief economist Svenja Gudell joined McKinsey’s Brooke Weddle, Bryan Hancock, and Lucia Rahilly to help business leaders make sense of the current collision of labor market trends: gen AI, agentic AI, an aging workforce, shifting priorities, and more. Tune in to the episode, then explore more of our insights on how to navigate the new world of work.
Getting Ahead of EU AI Literacy Requirements – How Businesses Can Stay Compliant and Competitive - Jonathan Armstrong, European Business Review
In most companies, AI is being used in business functions from HR and marketing to customer service. Figures reveal 78% of global companies use AI, with 71% deploying GenAI in at least one function[i]. However, often employees don’t fully understand how these tools work, and this gap can no longer be ignored.The EU AI Act, particularly Article 4, addresses this by making AI literacy a legal requirement. Since February 2025, any organisation operating in the EU, or offering AI-enabled services to EU markets, must ensure their employees, contractors, and suppliers have a sufficient understanding of the AI tools they use. It is not enough to deploy technology responsibly; organisations must demonstrate that their workforce knows what they are doing.
Wednesday, September 10, 2025
The future of work is agentic - McKinsey
Think about your org chart. Now imagine it features both your current colleagues—humans, if you’re like most of us—and AI agents. That’s not science fiction; it’s happening—and it’s happening relatively quickly, according to McKinsey Senior Partner Jorge Amar. In this episode of McKinsey Talks Talent, Jorge joins McKinsey talent leaders Brooke Weddle and Bryan Hancock and Global Editorial Director Lucia Rahilly to talk about what these AI agents are, how they’re being used, and how leaders can prepare now for the workforce of the not-too-distant future.
Seizing the agentic AI advantage - McKinsey
Nearly eight in ten companies report using gen AI—yet just as many report no significant bottom-line impact.1 Think of it as the “gen AI paradox.” At the heart of this paradox is an imbalance between “horizontal” (enterprise-wide) copilots and chatbots—which have scaled quickly but deliver diffuse, hard-to-measure gains—and more transformative “vertical” (function-specific) use cases—about 90 percent of which remain stuck in pilot mode. AI agents offer a way to break out of the gen AI paradox. That’s because agents have the potential to automate complex business processes—combining autonomy, planning, memory, and integration—to shift gen AI from a reactive tool to a proactive, goal-driven virtual collaborator. This shift enables far more than efficiency. Agents supercharge operational agility and create new revenue opportunities.
Tuesday, September 09, 2025
Ep. 11 AGI and the Future of Higher Ed: Talking with Ray Schroeder - Unfixed: How AI is Reshaping Higher Education with Nick Janos and Zach Justus, Podcast
In this episode of Unfixed, we talk with Ray Schroeder—Senior Fellow at UPCEA and Professor Emeritus at the University of Illinois Springfield—about Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) and what it means for the future of higher education. While most of academia is still grappling with ChatGPT and basic AI tools, Schroeder is thinking ahead to AI agents, human displacement, and AGI’s existential implications for teaching, learning, and the university itself. We explore why AGI is so controversial, what institutions should be doing now to prepare, and how we can respond responsibly—even while we’re already overwhelmed.
Artificial Intelligence: Three top experts share advice on how to implement AI tools into your business today — Executive Insights, Louisville Business First
Certainly, AI can be used across the board and in all those functional areas within a company. A real-world example is a company that is a customer of ours literally spent 40 hours a month in each of its regions compiling data and providing some analysis of that data back up to the executive team. It was a very manual process and quite frankly, a pain point for each of the leaders that ran the regions across the country. They were able to install an AI project that allowed for the aggregation of data across all the offices within the region automatically and gain intelligence off of those operational metrics. It cut that time for report creation from 40 hours down to under an hour. So, operationally they saved themselves a week of someone’s time every month.
Monday, September 08, 2025
San José Completes First City-Led AI Startup Grants - Scarlett Evans, AI Business
The city of San José California has announced the winners of its inaugural AI Incentive Program, the first city-run grant program of its kind in the U.S. Under the initiative, early-stage startups using AI to tackle everything from maternal health to food waste competed for public funding and professional services. From a pool of 170 competitors, three won a $50,000 grant, while one received $25,000 in funding. The winners were maternal health company Elythea, which uses AI voice agents to connect with at-risk patients, smart kitchen platform Metafoodx that uses embodied AI to cut waste and optimize operations at restaurants and hardware optimization company Clika, which simplifies AI models into low-power formats to improve accessibility and efficiency across edge devices.
Google's New Universal Translator AI is FREE & More AI Use Cases - The AI Advantage, YouTube
In the first part of this podcast, the host discusses Google's new universal voice translator, a significant improvement in translation technology. This new feature, available as a free update to the Google Translate app, allows for real-time conversations between two people speaking different languages through a "conversation" feature. The translator is noted for its impressive speed and low latency, which makes for a much smoother user experience. The app also includes a mode that can be used on a table between two people, with each person seeing the translated text facing them. Users can tap a microphone button to speak, and their words are instantly translated and displayed on the other side of the screen. The host expresses excitement about this development, highlighting its potential to create more meaningful connections between people from different linguistic backgrounds.
Sunday, September 07, 2025
How AI Is Changing—Not ‘Killing’—College - Colleen Flaherty, Inside Higher Ed
Key findings from Inside Higher Ed’s student survey on generative AI show that using the evolving technology hasn’t diminished the value of college in their view, but it could affect their critical thinking skills. Some of the results are perhaps surprising: Relatively few students say that generative AI has diminished the value of college, in their view, and nearly all of them want their institutions to address academic integrity concerns—albeit via a proactive approach rather than a punitive one. Another standout: Half of students who use AI for coursework say it’s having mixed effects on their critical thinking abilities, while a quarter report it’s helping them learn better.
New AI-powered live translation and language learning tools in Google Translate - Matt Sheets, Google Keyword
Building on our existing live conversation experience, our advanced AI models are now making it even easier to have a live conversation in more than 70 languages — including Arabic, French, Hindi, Korean, Spanish, and Tamil. Whether you’re an early learner looking to begin practicing conversation or an advanced speaker looking to brush up on vocabulary for an upcoming trip, Translate can now create tailored listening and speaking practice sessions just for you. These interactive practices are generated on-the-fly and intelligently adapt to your skill level.
Saturday, September 06, 2025
Mass Intelligence: From GPT-5 to nano banana: everyone is getting access to powerful AI - Ethan Mollick, One Useful Thing
There have been two barriers to accessing powerful AI for most users. The first was confusion. Few people knew to select an AI model. Even fewer knew that picking o3 from a menu in ChatGPT would get them access to an excellent Reasoner AI model, while picking 4o (which seems like a higher number) would give them something far less capable. According to OpenAI, less than 7% of paying customers selected o3 on a regular basis, meaning even power users were missing out on what Reasoners could do. Another factor was cost. Because the best models are expensive, free users were often not given access to them, or else given very limited access. Google led the way in giving some free access to its best models, but OpenAI stated that almost none of its free customers had regular access to reasoning models prior to the launch of GPT-5.
Why did the CSU spend millions on ChatGPT amid a budget crisis? We asked school leaders - Julia Barajas, LAist
CSU CIO Ed Clark explained. We were [also] seeing that some universities in our own system were starting to negotiate deals with these vendors, but then others couldn't afford to do that. So, we're thinking: “We're not going to create a digital divide within our own system. We're going to make sure that everybody has access to these tools.” And we buttress that with: We believe that these tools are going to become fundamental, just like the internet is today — every industry, every academic field, every discipline is going to be using these tools. So, we need our students, our community members, to engage with them now. We're not going to wait until we're far behind everybody else ... to give this access. And on the workforce side, in terms of student preparation, we already know that employers are expecting students to graduate with [AI] skills. ... We want our students to be prepared for the workforce or graduate school or whatever they're going to do when they leave the CSU.
Friday, September 05, 2025
China Is Building a Brain-Computer Interface Industry - Emily Mullen, Wired
In a policy document released this month, China has signaled its ambition to become a world leader in brain-computer interfaces, the same technology that Elon Musk’s Neuralink and other US startups are developing. Brain-computer interfaces, or BCIs, read and decode neural activity to translate it into commands. Because they provide a direct link between the brain and an external device, such as a computer or robotic arm, BCIs have tremendous potential as assistive devices for people with severe physical disabilities.
Here are 4 pain points amid the new normal of online learning - Alcino Donadel, University Business
The rapid pace of AI development is transforming the online experience. More students will access AI tutoring and adaptive learning that create personalized programs. At the same time, respondents predicted declining prominence in full-time faculty and lecture-based instruction as central components to online learners’ experiences, as students rely instead on a mix of adjunct faculty and technology-mediated experiences. “Over the past decade, we’ve witnessed a profound shift: what began as an exception has become a baseline expectation,” Bethany Simunich, vice president for innovation and research at Quality Matters, an education quality assurance agency. “Today’s students—across every age and background—expect learning to be flexible and accessible.”
Thursday, September 04, 2025
Teaching Online Podcast - Tom Cavanagh and Kelvin Thompson, University of Central Florida
Episode 193. Guests Ray Schroeder and Dr. Melissa Vito unpack decades of practical wisdom on leadership vision in conversation with hosts Tom and Kelvin. This episode is the first in a mini-series of “pillar panels” offering distilled insights from esteemed community members on key, “structural support” topics essential in the future of strategic online/digital education. This episode includes links and reflections synthesizing the advent and growth of online learning.
Opinion: Cutting Through the Hype for GenAI in Higher Educationv - Stephan Geering, GovTech
Amid so much promotion, news coverage and forecasting about artificial intelligence, the university CIO must distinguish between practical, impactful applications and those driven by hype or outweighed by risk. For chief information officers, the priority is clear: distinguish between practical, impactful applications and those driven by hype. The goal is to adopt AI that enhances teaching, learning and operational efficiency without compromising academic standards. Before assessing what's practical versus aspirational, CIOs must first ground their strategy in a clear understanding of responsible AI frameworks such as the National Institute of Standards and Technology AI Risk Management Framework and with an eye on upcoming federal and state regulation such as the Colorado AI Act.
Wednesday, September 03, 2025
AI Companies Roll Out Educational Tools - Ray Schroeder, Inside Higher Ed
Fall semesters are just beginning, and the companies offering three leading AI models—Gemini by Google, Claude by Anthropic and ChatGPT by OpenAI—have rolled out tools to facilitate AI-enhanced learning. Here’s a comparison and how to get them. Each of the three leading AI providers has taken a somewhat different approach to providing an array of educational tools and support for students, faculty and administrators. We can expect these tools to improve, proliferate and become a competitive battleground among the three. At stake is, at least in part, the future marketplace for their products.
AI Is Eliminating Jobs for Younger Workers - Will Knight, Wired
Economists at Stanford University have found the strongest evidence yet that artificial intelligence is starting to eliminate certain jobs. But the story isn’t that simple: While younger workers are being replaced by AI in some industries, more experienced workers are seeing new opportunities emerge. Erik Brynjolfsson, a professor at Stanford University, Ruyu Chen, a research scientist, and Bharat Chandar, a postgraduate student, examined data from ADP, the largest payroll provider in the US, from late 2022, when ChatGPT debuted, to mid-2025. The researchers discovered several strong signals in the data—most notably that the adoption of generative AI coincided with a decrease in job opportunities for younger workers in sectors previously identified as particularly vulnerable to AI-powered automation (think customer service and software development). In these industries, they found a 16 percent decline in employment for workers aged 22 to 25.
Tuesday, September 02, 2025
Taking AI Welfare Seriously - Robert Long, et al; arXiv
In this report, we argue that there is a realistic possibility that some AI systems will be conscious and/or robustly agentic in the near future. That means that the prospect of AI welfare and moral patienthood, i.e. of AI systems with their own interests and moral significance, is no longer an issue only for sci-fi or the distant future. It is an issue for the near future, and AI companies and other actors have a responsibility to start taking it seriously. We also recommend three early steps that AI companies and other actors can take: They can (1) acknowledge that AI welfare is an important and difficult issue (and ensure that language model outputs do the same), (2) start assessing AI systems for evidence of consciousness and robust agency, and (3) prepare policies and procedures for treating AI systems with an appropriate level of moral concern. To be clear, our argument in this report is not that AI systems definitely are, or will be, conscious, robustly agentic, or otherwise morally significant.
Microsoft AI CEO Warns "Seemingly Conscious AI is Coming" - Wes Roth, YouTube
Get ready for this discussion about AI to start popping up a lot more and that discussion will be is AI conscious? Now you might have an immediate response to that like of course it's not or maybe it is there's some people who are convinced that it is. My take for the record has always been that while maybe not the current chatbots that we have right now. We might stumble upon something as we scale up and improve it, add more systems. But as you'll see, the issue isn't whether it is or not, but more that we have no idea. Not knowing will cause problems. Now, here you're going to see me talking to Nick Bostonramm. I was absolutely blown away by the fact that he took some time to talk to us.
Monday, September 01, 2025
ChatGPT-5 Gets Warmer, Friendlier Update - Scarlett Evans, AI Business
OpenAI has announced an update to its latest ChatGPT model to make it “warmer and friendlier” in response to user complaints. The announcement follows OpenAI’s launch of its latest GPT model earlier this month, which has been met with user complaints and calls for a return to the GPT-4o model. The update is hoped to alleviate some of these concerns, with a push for a more approachable chatbot that doesn’t increase in sycophancy (another recent complaint around the program.) “Changes are subtle, but ChatGPT should feel more approachable now,” the company wrote on X.
How to remain resilient, focused, and effective in uncertain times - McKinsey
Disruption isn’t an occasional hurdle; it’s the new normal. According to McKinsey research, 84 percent of leaders report feeling underprepared for future disruptions, with geopolitical tensions topping the list of concerns. Leaders today are called to steer through shifting trade policies, international conflict, and internal organizational pressures—all while keeping their people engaged and their strategies on track. McKinsey’s Ida Kristensen and coauthors outline four dimensions of resilience that can help organizations stay grounded and agile when the path ahead is unclear:
Financial
Operational
Organizational
External
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)