States are defining what AI will look like in practice across K12 and higher education, building policy infrastructure that reflects both the technology’s reach and its risks. A new national overview from the Education Commission of the States spells out how public officials are issuing guidance, installing guardrails and coordinating across sectors to align AI use with school strategy and workforce demand. Arkansas, Illinois, Ohio and Tennessee now require public school districts and postsecondary institutions to adopt formal policies governing acceptable AI use. At the same time, at least 35 states have issued some form of guidance ranging from short advisories to full frameworks. Taken together, these efforts converge on a shared set of priorities that promote human decision-making, student AI literacy, safety and data protection.
Sunday, May 31, 2026
If Canvas Goes Down Again, What’s the Contingency Plan? - Lisa Anderson and Mairéad Martin, Inside Higher Ed
Faculty and administrators across the country, shaped by their experience adapting instruction during the COVID-19 pandemic, knew what to do last week. Shifting the modality of instruction is not new for us. Instructors quickly improvised alternative assignments, delayed quizzes and exams, populated offline course materials, and adjusted timelines in order to keep learning moving forward. When it came time to notify students of these adjustments, however, a more fundamental issue became apparent. Many instructors came to discover they had no reliable way to contact their students outside the learning management system itself. Some did not know how to access their course rosters outside Canvas. Others teaching large online lectures encountered institutional email delivery limits. Many had no established communication pathways beyond LMS announcements.
Saturday, May 30, 2026
Why Higher Education Needs Humanics - Michael J. Avaltroni, US News
In a world where artificial intelligence now permeates daily life and higher education, it has become essential to weave the human element throughout the delivery of instruction – particularly healthcare education.Enter humanics.The integration of humanics – often described as the study, understanding and development of key human qualities – represents a novel way to foster interdisciplinary collaboration in education, technology and the human component in an AI-driven world. It speaks to the urgent need to build healthcare teams that optimize all the advances in artificial intelligence with the humans in the middle – our students, clinicians and patients. It also speaks to the urgency to redefine higher education itself.
Grade inflation much higher in ‘AI-exposed’ degrees - Jack Groves, Times Higher Education
Drawing on publicly available data from a large research university in Texas, Igor Chirikov, a senior researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, examined the marks awarded to more than 500,000 students between 2018 and 2025. When these grade patterns were compared against syllabus data on the types of writing tasks used for assessment, it revealed the share of A grades in “AI exposed” courses rose by 13 percentage points, or 30 per cent, compared with the 2022 baseline. Overall grade point average rose by 0.12 points for “high-homework” courses in which AI could potentially complete the assessment, says the study, which was published as a working paper by Berkeley’s Center for Studies in Higher Education. Grade inflation occurred only in homework-based writing and coding tasks and was not found to the same extent in in-person examination, explains the study, which suggests the computing power of “AI [is] substituting for student effort specifically on the unsupervised assessments where instructors cannot observe the production of submitted work”.
Friday, May 29, 2026
Maine's Public University System on verge of Closing Deal for First System Wide AI Tool - Kristian Moravec, Central Maine
Maine’s public university system plans to award its first contract for an artificial intelligence platform to ChatGPT Edu, an OpenAI chatbot tool for higher education, the system told employees and students in an email Friday. The two-year contract will cost about $1.39 million and serve the system’s estimated 25,200 students and 5,600 employees, likely starting in July, according to Ryan Low, the system’s vice chancellor for finance and strategic AI integration. OpenAI’s winning bid, which was submitted by a vendor, Carasoft, is not yet set in stone.
Can colleges still deliver in the age of AI? One Ivy League school is investing $30 million to improve career outcomes - Jessica Dickler, CNBC
College students are increasingly worried about what an AI-driven jobs apocalypse could mean for their employment prospects. To that end, many colleges and universities are racing to recalibrate.
Even at nation’s most elite schools, the focus is shifting to career readiness. Fears that artificial intelligence will upend students’ future career plans are reverberating across college campuses. “Higher education needs to do better,” said Joseph Catrino, the inaugural director of Dartmouth’s Center for Career Design. “We need to do better for our students — we need to step up and help students be prepared.” The Ivy League college recently raised $30 million in endowed funds to support internship opportunities. Now students can access up to $6,500 during any term to help finance unpaid or underpaid internships. “This allows the student to explore and engage in a field that they normally wouldn’t be able to,” Catrino said.
Thursday, May 28, 2026
Why Indiana University’s AI skills course is free - Pamela Whitten, University Businiess
Indiana University just gave away our most popular AI skills course by making it completely free and open to all, with no application or tuition required. Anyone who completes the course that we’ve come to know as GenAI 101 will earn an AI skills badge from our world-renowned Kelley School of Business at no cost.Our decision to make such a highly sought-after course available for free is rather unconventional for a major university. Tuition is one of the ways we pay the bills, yet we know that the ability to wisely work alongside artificial intelligence is too important of a skill to lock behind a paywall. When our faculty developed and launched GenAI 101 eight months ago, we could not fully predict the continuing and accelerating appetite for AI literacy among corporations, small businesses, state agencies, and universities across the country. They asked us to share it, and we have now done so by making the class freely available to anyone.
MIT president blames federal policy shifts for big drop in research on campus - Washington Post
MIT is doing less research and enrolling fewer graduate students as a result of federal actions, the university president warned Thursday. Federally funded research on campus is down more than 20 percent compared to this time last year, MIT’s president, Sally Kornbluth, told the campus community in a video message, and the number of new federal research awards is also down more than 20 percent.“That is a striking loss for one of the most influential and productive research communities in the world,“ Kornbluth said.
Wednesday, May 27, 2026
AI research papers are getting better, and it’s a big problem for scientists - Joshua Dzieza, the Verge
“It’s a huge burden on the peer-review system, which is already at the limit,” Degen said. “There’s just too many papers being published and there’s not enough peer reviewers, and if the LLMs make it so much easier to mass produce papers, then this will reach a breaking point.” Optimists about generative AI have high hopes for its ability to produce future scientific breakthroughs — accelerating discovery, eliminating most types of cancer — but the technology is currently undermining one of the pillars of scientific research, inundating editors and reviewers with an endless stream of papers. Paradoxically, the better the technology gets at producing competent papers, the worse the crisis becomes.
The AI assembly line: Strategic imperatives for CEOs - Gianmarco Cilento, Steffen Fuchs , and Varun Marya; McKinsey
Just as Ford’s production line transformed physical labor, agentic AI—systems that can act autonomously rather than just responding to prompts—is now reshaping cognitive work, including engineering design, supply chain planning, and risk assessment. (We will refer to agentic AI simply as “AI” throughout this article.) With AI, companies no longer need to depend solely on the judgment and availability of a small number of experts to make complex decisions or create sophisticated products. Instead, knowledge becomes broadly accessible to anyone with the right AI capabilities, accelerating decision-making, product customization, and other tasks once limited to experts.
Tuesday, May 26, 2026
Quantum’s bold promise: What business leaders need to know - Henning Soller and Sven Smit with Anna Heid, McKiney
For years, business leaders and corporate boards have viewed quantum computing (QC) as a threat—and for good reason: It has the potential to break today’s strongest encryptions. That moment, commonly known as Q-Day, will occur when quantum computers succeed in factoring exceptionally large numbers, undermining the math that public-key cryptography depends on. Though business leaders are keeping Q-Day top of mind, they are viewing QC through a new lens—less a threat and more an opportunity. Many are spurring their companies to experiment with QC now so that they will be ready to deploy it at scale once quantum computers become mainstream, which could happen within the next five years.
Landscape of Emerging Technologies in Higher Education: A Review - Sharin Jacob, Heather Miceli and Hannah Schneider, Digital Promise
This literature review explores the rapid integration of artificial intelligence in higher education, examining both institutional influences and instructional practices. It highlights how governance frameworks, resource allocation, and faculty attitudes shape access and responsible technology adoption. Pedagogically, the paper emphasizes the necessity of embedding AI literacy, critical evaluation, and ethical reasoning into curricula to prevent student overreliance on AI tools. Ultimately, institutions must balance innovation with accountability by carefully aligning AI tools with educational values to advance authentic learning.
Monday, May 25, 2026
The Third Wave of Online Education: Why AI-Powered Adaptive Learning Could Disrupt Universities, Corporate Training, and Workforce Development - Tim King, Solutions Review
The Third Wave of Online Education Has Begun. Artificial intelligence is beginning to fundamentally reshape education. Not simply classroom technology. Not digital homework systems. Not video-based e-learning platforms. Education itself. During a recent episode of Inside Jam, Solutions Review President Doug Atkinson sat down with Jonathan Cornelissen to discuss what may become one of the defining transformations of the next decade: the rise of AI-powered adaptive learning systems capable of personalizing education at scale. The discussion explored the evolution of online learning, enterprise AI upskilling, workforce disruption, higher education economics, AI-native tutoring systems, and the growing realization that traditional educational models may no longer align with the pace of technological change.
Quantum’s bold promise: What business leaders need to know - Henning Soller and Sven Smit with Anna Heid - McKinsey Quarterly
For years, business leaders and corporate boards have viewed quantum computing (QC) as a threat—and for good reason: It has the potential to break today’s strongest encryptions. That moment, commonly known as Q-Day, will occur when quantum computers succeed in factoring exceptionally large numbers, undermining the math that public-key cryptography depends on. Though business leaders are keeping Q-Day top of mind, they are viewing QC through a new lens—less a threat and more an opportunity. Many are spurring their companies to experiment with QC now so that they will be ready to deploy it at scale once quantum computers become mainstream, which could happen within the next five years.
Sunday, May 24, 2026
The AI industry is still in flux, and university programs are trying to keep up - Marketplace
Welcome to May — the job market is currently awash in fresh graduates looking for that first post-college job, and it’s not an easy task. The unemployment rate for young college graduates jumped to 5.6% at the end of last year, entry-level job postings in the U.S. are down by a third since 2023, and grads are even up against artificial intelligence outsourcing. At the same time, some universities, and the students within, are making a big bet on AI to secure their future. When Massachusetts Institute of Technology, for example, unveiled a new program in 2022 called “AI and decision-making,” students showed up. Professor Asuman Ozdaglar is an engineering professor and a deputy dean of academics at MIT. She joined “Marketplace” host Kai Ryssdal to discuss how universities are staying ahead of the curve with the labor market, and how professors think about teaching for an industry that’s still changing so rapidly. The following is an edited transcript of their conversation.
5 Things to Know About the Changing Cybersecurity Landscape in Higher Education - UMass Amherst
Recent incidents affecting institutions nationwide, including the widely used Canvas learning management system, have reinforced the importance of cybersecurity not only as a technical priority, but as a shared community responsibility. For Jeremy Pelegrin, Chief Information Security Officer at UMass Amherst, the conversation around cybersecurity today extends far beyond firewalls and software updates. It’s about protecting teaching and research, strengthening digital trust, and helping the university community develop habits that support a safer digital environment for everyone. “We have reached a point as a society where cybersecurity must be a responsibility for every person on the UMass campus,” Pelegrin said. “As we navigate through a changing landscape of threats and compliance requirements, it’s really about developing good cyber habits that can be applicable regardless of where the world is going to lead us.” As technology, artificial intelligence, and online threats continue to evolve, UMass Amherst is approaching digital safety as an ongoing partnership across campus. Here are five things the community should know about how the landscape is changing and how the university is adapting alongside it.
Saturday, May 23, 2026
Assessing students when artificial intelligence is ubiquitous - Michelle Seref, Times Higher Education
If we continue to prioritise memorisation in an age of wall-to-wall information, we send the wrong message to our students and employers. Michelle Seref offers advice on assessment that builds critical thinking skills. For much of higher education’s modern history, assessment has followed a familiar formula: a midterm and a final exam, with a heavy emphasis on whether students can retain and reproduce information. That model made sense in a world where knowledge was scarce and expertise lived primarily in textbooks and lectures. That world no longer exists. With students’ early access to technology, they can find most information from Google, YouTube and, now, AI chatbots. The rapid rise of generative AI hasn’t made assessment obsolete, but it has made its misalignment impossible to ignore. The real question is no longer what students know, but how they think, decide, adapt and apply judgement. Yet many assessments still measure recall rather than application.
AI and the Employment Outlook for College Grads - Jim A. Jorstad, GovTech
It’s that time of the year when graduation ceremonies take place at colleges and universities throughout the country. Students will fill auditoriums, gymnasiums and stadiums, each with their own dreams and hopes of landing that ideal job they’ve been working toward. Some will have taken certification courses, served as researchers or graduate assistants, or participated in internships. Hopefully, they received the necessary education and training to be successful in their careers of choice. But they're among the first graduating classes to have had most of their college experience upended by artificial intelligence. What will be the impact of AI? Are students graduating with the necessary AI skills, and what kind of employment environment are they entering? I want to focus specifically on IT-related jobs, although many of the same hiring trends can be applied to other disciplines. Let’s consider what factors are affecting the job market, and what graduates may experience during their job and career search.
Friday, May 22, 2026
The Case for Data Centers in Space- McKinsey
Starcloud CEO Philip Johnston on the potential role orbital data centers could play in meeting growing AI compute demand—and the technical and economic uncertainties that remain. Philip Johnston, a McKinsey alumnus and cofounder of orbital compute infrastructure provider Starcloud, believes that space-based systems could become a meaningful part of the future compute landscape. He recently spoke to McKinsey Partner Luca Bennici about how the space-based data center technology is evolving, the challenges involved, and what needs to happen for orbital data centers to become a viable complement to terrestrial infrastructure. The interview transcript has been edited for clarity and style.
From Restriction to Integration: Practical Strategies for Embracing AI in Online Courses - Taoufik Ennoure, Faculty Focus
Instead of prohibiting the use of AI, it is more effective to assign tasks that require students to use AI tools and then have them critically assess the outputs. In asynchronous online courses with less frequent instructor interaction, I have adopted a new approach to enhance engagement in weekly discussions. I ask students to use AI tools to generate practice questions and sample answers, allowing them to self-assess their understanding. Students then post their AI-generated questions and answers as original discussion posts, reflecting on which questions were most helpful and identifying any gaps in the tool’s knowledge. Additionally, they evaluate at least two other question/answer sets created by their peers. This method fosters a peer dialogue focused on critical assessment, reducing the instructor’s workload in creating every quiz while encouraging collaborative learning.
Thursday, May 21, 2026
Layoffs down from early '25 — except in this one field - Emma W. Thorne, Editor at LinkedIn News
Layoffs fell 50% from the first third of 2025 to the first third of 2026 — with one glaring exception. Tech was hit the hardest, laying off more than 85,000 workers in the first four months of the year, according to a new report out Thursday from Challenger, Gray & Christmas. That's a 33% jump year-over-year. The main culprit? Artificial intelligence, which was the top-cited reason for the second month in a row. A separate release from the Labor Department showed continuing unemployment claims hit a two-year low last week.
‘Student Guide to AI’ returns for third year with a new focus: Human capabilities - Elon University News Bureau
“Human Wisdom for the Age of AI: A Field Guide to Cultivating Essential Skills”, a publication by Elon University, the American Association of Colleges and Universities and The Princeton Review, is provided to students and institutions free of charge. The new publication, “Human Wisdom for the Age of AI: A Field Guide to Cultivating Essential Skills,” helps students cultivate the human skills they need to thrive in a digital world, whether working with AI technologies or learning independently of those tools. The guide includes engaging and fun exercises on curiosity, critical and deep thinking, creativity, ethical perspectives, communication and relational skills, among others. Like the 2024 and 2025 editions, this year’s guide is provided to students and institutions free of charge and is available for download at: www.studentguidetoai.org. The guide draws on 10 voices across centuries and cultures — from Aristotle, Cicero and Descartes to Mencius and Ptahhotep — whose enduring insights into human judgment, creativity, ethics and wisdom take on new urgency as AI reshapes how we learn and work.
Wednesday, May 20, 2026
AI risk to university jobs despite staff believing roles are safe - Juliette Rowsell, Times Higher Ed
University workers generally do not believe that their jobs will be taken by artificial intelligence in the short term but experts have warned against complacency, saying that automation may still be used as “justification” to cut roles anyway. While respondents to Times Higher Education’s UK University Redundancy Survey expressed widespread concern about the impact of the tens of thousands of job losses across the UK sector, concerns over the effect of AI remain low. Asked: “Do you fear you will be made redundant within the next three years due to the rise of AI?” more than half (55 per cent) disagreed, with 17 per cent of these strongly disagreeing. Just under 5 per cent strongly agreed and 14 per cent said they agree, while a fifth (21 per cent) neither agreed or disagreed.
In an AI-driven world, the most important skills are still human - Eric Townsend, Inside Higher Ed
Across higher education, artificial intelligence is now embedded in everyday academic work, from early research to final drafts. For many students, it has become a default starting point. The urgent question is not whether students use AI, but how they use it—specifically, whether these tools are reinforcing learning or bypassing the cognitive work that leads to it. As AI accelerates core academic tasks, educators are confronting a central challenge: how to preserve depth, judgment and intellectual engagement in an environment optimized for speed.
Tuesday, May 19, 2026
Micro-credentials gain ground as focus shifts from degrees to skills - Enterprise AM
A university degree is no longer the only ticket to a career. Employers across the globe — and increasingly in Egypt — are placing more emphasis on practical skills and targeted expertise, fueling demand for short courses, professional certifications, and micro-credentials that offer faster and cheaper avenues into the labor market. Short courses, big gains: Micro-credentials — short, skills-focused programs granting a verified certificate or digital badge — are gaining ground in fast-changing sectors like tech, digital marketing, AI, cybersecurity, and data analytics. Programs span local training from the Information Technology Institute and the Digital Egypt Pioneers Initiative (DEPI) to global options like Google Career Certificates on Coursera and Udacity Nanodegrees, iCareer founder and CEO Akram Marwan tells EnterpriseAM. The shift reflects a broader rethink of education — less a one-time university experience, more a continuous process of reskilling. As technologies evolve faster than universities can adapt, workers and employers want cheaper, targeted ways to build job-ready skills, Marwan says. Lower-cost online programs and funded initiatives like DEPI are also widening access beyond Cairo and Alexandria, potentially expanding the pool for remote and digital jobs.
Monday, May 18, 2026
Education Department Finalizes AI Priorities - Georgina Mackie, Broadband Breakfast
Under the policy, schools and higher education institutions can use AI to expand computer science and AI coursework, integrate AI into instruction, and provide professional development for educators. The priority also encourages AI use for personalized learning, tutoring, and student support, including for students with disabilities and those below grade levelThe department said the policy is necessary to maintain U.S. competitiveness, stating it “must provide our Nation’s youth with opportunities to learn how to use AI technology effectively.” The final rule follows more than 300 public comments, reflecting both support for expanding AI literacy and concerns about privacy, safety, and student development.
Bringing the AI-Active Lesson to Life in Higher Education - Adam Stone, EdTech
Evolving from researching artificial intelligence tools to substantive applications of AI, colleges are both boosting student engagement and supporting modern teaching in college classrooms.Across the higher education la ndscape, “we’re moving past AI readiness and starting to talk about how we can activate learning environments with AI,” says Micah Shippee, director of education at Samsung. Samsung’s AI-powered interactive display, for example, can give learners a shared point of focus and empower teachers with a range of capabilities to ensure student engagement.
https://edtechmagazine.com/higher/article/2026/05/bringing-ai-active-lesson-life-higher-education
Sunday, May 17, 2026
Artificial intelligence assisted design of a novel cooperative learning technique for higher education - Özgür Tutal, Nature
Cooperative learning has long been recognized as an effective pedagogical strategy, yet the development of innovative techniques tailored to modern educational demands remains a challenge. This study introduces the Curriculum Concept Constellation Technique (CCCT), a novel cooperative learning technique developed with the support of artificial intelligence (AI). The CCCT employs a metaphorical and visual approach, wherein students collaboratively map key curriculum concepts into visual ‘constellations,’ (Throughout this manuscript, references to ‘constellations’ should be understood as a pedagogical metaphor for conceptual relationships, not as an astronomical or literal representation)—a metaphor representing how individual ideas (like stars) interconnect to form meaningful patterns. This approach fosters deeper conceptual understanding through creativity, role-based collaboration, and peer interaction.
Nature Retracts Oft-Cited Paper on Positive Impact of ChatGPT - GovTech
A widely read and frequently cited 2025 meta-analysis of 51 studies, which found positive effects of ChatGPT in education settings, has been retracted due to uncertainties about the studies and conclusions. A 2025 research paper finding substantial positive effects of ChatGPT on student learning outcomes was retracted last month, with the publishing journal Nature saying discrepancies “undermine the confidence the editor can place in the validity of the analysis and resulting conclusions.” The paper, The effect of ChatGPT on students’ learning performance, learning perception, and higher-order thinking: insights from a meta-analysis, reviewed findings from 51 research studies published between November 2022 and February 2025.
Saturday, May 16, 2026
The Secret to Understanding AI “Imagine the tech without the tech companies.” - Josh Tyrangiel, the Atlantic
Yet for all of the noise, a simple question stayed unanswered: What exactly was this new technology going to do for people? Not for corporations or the billionaires who aspired to become trillionaires, but for people with mortgages and sick parents and children struggling to learn things. Answers, when they came, were either so enormous as to be meaningless or so specific as to seem beside the point: AI would cure cancer and write your text messages
Rewiring for AI: From ambition to advantage - Lucia Rahilly and Roberta Fusaro, McKinsey Podcast
Companies chase AI everywhere but often fail to capture value—because they’re missing the muscle to scale what works. As generative and agentic AI reshape how work gets done, the real divide isn’t who has the best ideas—it’s who can turn them into real results at speed and scale. In this episode of The McKinsey Podcast, McKinsey Senior Partners Kate Smaje and Robert Levin speak to Global Editorial Director Lucia Rahilly about the updated Rewired playbook—and why winning with AI now depends less on ambition and more on building the organizational capabilities to deliver.
Friday, May 15, 2026
Canvas owner confirms cybersecurity incident - Anna Merod, Higher Ed Dive
Ed tech company Instructure said the data breach affected user names, messages and email addresses, as well as student ID numbers. A recent cybersecurity attack on Instructure exposed certain student information, the ed tech company confirmed in a May 1 status update. The following day, it said it believes the incident has been contained. Information impacted by the data breach includes messages between users, names, email addresses and student ID numbers, according to Instructure. The company said no passwords, dates of birth, government identifiers or financial information were believed to have been compromised as of May 2. While Instructure said it is actively investigating the incident alongside forensics experts, the company has not disclosed how many school districts were affected.
UNESCO and Tec Launch Regional Observatory on the Benefits and Risks of AI in Education - Ricardo Treviño, TecScience
Artificial intelligence is already being used as a tool in classrooms, but it can be a double-edged sword: either accelerating learning or exposing deep inequalities. Through the observatory, the goal is to promote evidence-based public policies that support the responsible and effective use of AI in the region’s educational systems. The observatory will conduct an assessment of AI use in education to generate evidence that can help shape public policy design. One of the observatory’s first ambitions is to reach more than 250,000 teachers across the region. During its first year of operation, the observatory will organize working groups to define impact measurement models.
Thursday, May 14, 2026
One New Thing: Campus Libraries Become AI Hubs - B. Navarre, US News
Alina Tugend is an award-winning education reporter. Here is her latest rave on an EdTech innovation: Campus libraries are becoming the go-to place for helping students, faculty and researchers learn about artificial intelligence and how to best integrate it into their work. For example, the libraries at Bryn Mawr College and the University of Oklahoma both provide AI “sandboxes” – shared virtual spaces for experimentation and education about various AI tools with ongoing support. This year, the University of Virginia launched its AI Literacy and Action Lab, developed in partnership with the university’s library. The lab is based on a framework created by Leo S. Lo, UVA’s new university librarian and dean of libraries, that integrates technical knowledge, ethical awareness, critical thinking, practical use and societal impact.
Chico State’s 2026-27 Book in Common to Tackle Artificial Intelligence - Chico State
The AI Con is a thought-provoking work examining the rise of artificial intelligence and its far-reaching impacts on society, education and the economy. The selection comes amid heightened interest and debate surrounding AI technologies, including within higher education. Co-authored by a University of Washington linguistics professor and a former Google employee, the book takes a critical look at artificial intelligence, exploring how it functions, the realities behind its rapid expansion, and the social, ethical and environmental implications of its use. Topics include the influence of AI on jobs and creative industries, concerns about academic integrity, and the environmental costs associated with large-scale data centers. “AI is now part of nearly every aspect of our lives,” Mahlis said. “This book helps readers understand not just what AI does, but how it works, and encourages us to question both the hype and the real consequences.”
https://today.csuchico.edu/chico-states-2026-27-book-in-common-to-tackle-artificial-intelligence/
Wednesday, May 13, 2026
Leadership Vision of the COLO to Shape Higher Ed Future? - Ray Schroeder, Inside Higher Ed
The chief online learning officers at colleges and universities are increasingly charting the future of teaching and learning. We are now on the cusp of a significant adjustment in the model of higher education. Who else within the institution’s administration has the combination of technological, pedagogical and innovative knowledge and experience to lead us into the future? The COLO’s knowledge of advanced technologies coupled with the experience of overseeing the application of the vast array of online technologies as they have evolved over the past 30 years is the combination we need to succeed. Our chief online learning officers bring credibility and sagacity to the table in leading us while making this critically important next step in enhancing online learning in higher education.
Instructure Pays Ransom to Canvas Hackers - Kathryn Palmer, Inside Higher Ed
Although the monetary value of the deal is unknown, Instructure says the cybercriminals have returned the hacked personal data and offered assurance “that no Instructure customers will be extorted as a result of this incident.” Instructure has paid a ransom to a gang of cybercriminals that have twice hacked the company’s learning management system, Canvas, over the past week and a half. According to an update published by the education-technology company Monday night, the deal means that the hackers have returned the compromised data of some 275 million users across more than 8,800 institutions.
Tuesday, May 12, 2026
Global infrastructure’s inflection poin - Alistair Green, ReThink McKinsey
Infrastructure is a crucial component of economic growth. Reliable transport, logistics, energy, communications, and other critical building blocks are vital to keep industries running. But much of the world’s infrastructure is getting old and outmoded and is no longer suited for the challenges ahead. Many systems that were built decades ago are nearing the end of their lifespans. Even newer infrastructure can come under pressure from shifting population dynamics, climate volatility, or digital disruption. Growing urbanization, geopolitical shifts, and the arrival of new technologies are revealing the limits of existing infrastructure systems.Meanwhile, what we call “infrastructure” is changing. For decades, this term referred mostly to traditional assets such as roads, bridges, ports, and power grids. Today, the definition of infrastructure is expanding to include tech-driven prerequisites for modern growth, such as hyperscale data centers, fiber networks, and electric-vehicle-charging stations.
AI Outperforms ER Doctors in Diagnostic Cases, Study Points to Collaborative Care - Macy Meyer, CNN
The study, published in the journal Science, found that a state-of-the-art large language model outperformed human doctors on a range of common clinical tasks. Using real emergency department data and hundreds of physician comparisons, the model matched or even exceeded human clinician performance in diagnostic choices, emergency triage and determining next steps in management. The authors of the study said those results do not mean AI models are ready to replace human doctors. Instead, the results indicate that industry professionals need faster, more rigorous standards for evaluation and rules for using AI in medicine.
Monday, May 11, 2026
Staying Ahead with AI: My Experience Completing a Micro Credential - Blog Donegal ETB
I decided to enrol in the Introduction to Artificial Intelligence (Level 4) micro‑credential with Donegal ETB: to build a strong foundation in AI and ensure that I stay ahead of the curve in my field. AI is transforming industries at a pace we’ve never seen before. As someone responsible for supporting resiliency across a large healthcare organisation, I need to understand the tools and technologies that are becoming integral to decision‑making, risk management, and operational continuity. I wanted to understand what’s behind the systems, how they work, and what they mean for the future of my profession. This micro‑credential felt like the right first step. One of the biggest benefits was gaining a solid grounding in what AI is and the real concepts and systems behind it. Understanding AI’s origins and fundamentals has given me a stronger lens through which to view the changes happening across our sector. I’m already applying that insight in my day‑to‑day work, especially when considering the risks, opportunities, and implications of new technologies.
Making mergers work: A playbook for public sector consolidations - McKinsey
Government consolidations are far less common than private sector ones. However, when government M&A occurs, five principles can guide the process and facilitate smooth transitions. Private sector M&A is widely reported on, and while they have a mixed track record, they often demonstrate how large, independent organizations can come together to create value. However, government M&A occurs far less frequently. Although the public sector differs in important ways—such as lacking a profit motive, operating under distinct governance structures, and moving through slower decision cycles—core change-management principles still apply. This article explores five principles, in particular, that can help ensure public sector M&A is successful.
Sunday, May 10, 2026
UW System Will Give Raises to Faculty in High-Demand Fields - Inside Higher Ed
The University of Wisconsin system will give more than 2,300 faculty in high-demand fields a pay raise this summer, The Cap Times reported. The State Legislature appropriated $27 million annually for the increases, which will be doled out with the “goal of focusing on market competitiveness of those faculty in high demand fields of study,” which include biomedical sciences, education, graphic design and veterinary medicine, the distribution plan states. To determine which fields are included, the system used Department of Workforce Development data on high-demand jobs that require a bachelor’s degree. Nearly 16 percent fewer adults started college for the first time this fall compared to the previous year.
What’s Behind a Drop in New Adult Learners This Fall? - Inside Higher Ed
Nearly 16 percent fewer adults started college for the first time this fall compared to the previous year. Some say the change represents rightsizing after an enrollment boom, but others say it’s a reversal worth keeping an eye on. In the economic upheaval that followed the COVID-19 pandemic, adult students flocked to higher education in droves. Every fall from 2021 to 2024, the number of first-time students over the age of 25 grew—including a substantial jump in fall 2024, when new students older than 25 grew 18.7 percent over the previous year, according to National Student Clearinghouse Research Center data. But this past fall, that trend reversed. The number of first-time learners over the age of 25 dropped by 15.5 percent from fall 2024 to fall 2025.
Saturday, May 09, 2026
AI Is Now Improving Itself - There's an AI for That
This video explores the concept of recursive self-improvement, where AI systems increasingly design and refine their own successors. It traces this idea from mid-century predictions of an "intelligence explosion" to current milestones, such as Google DeepMind's Alpha Evolve and OpenAI’s GPT models, which are now being used to write their own code and accelerate the training of future iterations. The narrative suggests we are moving toward a "singularity" where AI contribution to its own development may eventually outpace human input. [00:36] However, the video also highlights significant bottlenecks that could flatten this growth curve, including the exhaustion of high-quality training data by 2028, immense energy requirements, and the "mother of all demos" lesson that team-based innovation often hits a wall. Instead of endless exponential growth, the trend is shifting toward "reasoning" models that think longer rather than just getting larger, and the race to build fully autonomous AI researchers by 2028. [09:01] {Gemini 3 Thinking Mode assisted with the summary of this video)
Personalized Learning and AI: Revolutionizing Education in the Modern Era - Sanjay Kulkarni, Jaro Education
The Strategic Importance of AI in Education: Scaling Excellence
How AI Revolutionizes Personalized Learning: The Mechanics of Adaptation
AI in Education Examples: From Virtual Tutors to Predictive Analytics
The Future of AI in Education: Immersive and Predictive Frontiers
Friday, May 08, 2026
AI Agents in Education: What’s Working and What’s Missing - Abby Sourwine, GovTech
As universities pilot agentic AI for advising and administrative tasks, its place in teaching and learning remains unclear. Experts say decision-makers will need to look carefully at reliability, risks and partners. “We are in the earliest days,” said Nicole Engelbert, vice president of product strategy for student systems at Oracle. “Take a side eye on what anyone is saying about what’s happening in a pervasive way.” “Education is specifically different than your normal institutional tasks,” said Jake Burley, a researcher at the Applied Ethics Center at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. “There’s a strong sense that there’s something personal or powerful about the educational experience.”
Teach students to ask better questions with Artificial Intelligence - Yiming V. Wang & Christoph Heubeck, Nature
Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) has entered university classrooms at a remarkable speed, challenging not only how students learn but also how teachers can tell where thinking is happening1,2,3. AI use shows more than rapid adaptation to a new tool: it also exposes how academic training has long shaped the questions students ask. Conventionally, many questions are framed to elicit coherence rather than conflict, synthesis rather than uncertainty, for example: “Summarise the state of knowledge …”, “Explain the mechanisms of…”. Put to an AI system, the responses often smooth disagreement and blur the limits of evidence4,5. The challenge in AI use is therefore not how far students should rely on AI but whether universities can help them ask questions that expose uncertainty rather than conceal it. We call this approach “grounded inquiry”, which we define as using AI to expose disagreements and weak support, trace claims to evidence, and make uncertainty apparent within a curated set of primary literature sources. We find that this approach helps Earth science students to think more independently and critically.
Thursday, May 07, 2026
Mountain View-based Khan Academy partners with nonprofits to build online AI degree program - Emma Montalbano, Moutain View Voice
Amid emerging conversations about the future of white collar jobs in the age of artificial intelligence, Sal Khan thinks that now is the time to create something he’s been thinking about for years — a new pathway for higher education. Khan Academy, an online learning platform headquartered in Mountain View, TED, a nonprofit that aims to uplift ideas, and ETS, an organization that develops and administers standardized tests, have partnered to establish an online college called Khan TED Institute. Its inaugural program will allow students to earn a bachelor’s of science degree in applied AI, which Khan believes could benefit people interested in many careers.
Faculty Concerned About ASU’s ‘Frankensteinian’ AI Course Builder - Emma Whitford, Inside Higher Ed
Arizona State University soft launched a web app earlier this month that allows anyone, for $5 per month, to create an apparently unlimited number of customized “learning modules” using artificial intelligence. The AI chatbot, called Atom, uses online instructional materials from ASU professors to create a course that’s tailored to the goals, interests and skill level of the user. After asking a handful of questions and processing for about five minutes, Atom debuts a personalized course that includes readings, quizzes and videos from a half dozen experts at ASU. But several professors whose content Atom pulls from were surprised to learn that their materials—including video lectures, slide decks and online assignments—were being perused, clipped and repackaged for these short online course modules. The faculty wasn’t told anything about the app, ASU Atomic, they said.
Wednesday, May 06, 2026
The Impact of AI on Engineering Jobs - Intuit Blog
Artificial intelligence has become fundamental enough to shift traditional engineering roles, changing how engineers work and the work itself. 88% of organizations now use AI in at least one business function. Engineers are using AI to tackle complex real-world problems, with applications spanning predictive maintenance, design optimization, and automation. AI’s impact on engineering is just beginning. But it’s already creating new job opportunities and demanding new skills to stay relevant. AI likely won’t replace engineers, but it will affect some roles more than others. That makes adaptability 1 of the most valuable traits in the field right now.
How should universities define AI proficiency? - Junghwan Kim, Inside Higher Ed
But what does “AI readiness” mean? I began reframing that question after attending a global technology gathering of 148,000 attendees and more than 4,000 companies in Las Vegas this January. At CES (Consumer Electronics Show) 2026, leaders from Nvidia, AMD and OpenAI described the future of AI. I saw robots playing table tennis and AI systems embedded in everything from mobility platforms to health devices. One idea stood out. Three essential components for AI success: A keynote speaker, Roland Busch, president and CEO of Siemens AG, described three essential components for success in the AI era: technology, domain know-how and partnerships. That framework has reshaped how I think about AI proficiency – and how I design my courses.
https://www.timeshighereducation.com/campus/how-should-universities-define-ai-proficiency
Tuesday, May 05, 2026
Musk and Altman’s bitter feud over OpenAI to be laid bare in court - the Guardian
The bitter rivalry between two of the tech world’s most powerful men arrives in court this week, as Elon Musk’s lawsuit against Sam Altman and OpenAI heads to trial in Oakland, California. The case is set to feature some of the biggest names in Silicon Valley, and its outcome could affect the course of the AI boom. Musk’s suit, filed in 2024, focuses on the formative years of OpenAI when he, Altman and others co-founded the artificial intelligence company as a nonprofit with a grand purpose. “OpenAI is a non-profit artificial intelligence research company. Our goal is to advance digital intelligence in the way that is most likely to benefit humanity as a whole, unconstrained by a need to generate financial return,” reads the company’s mission statement, published in late 2015.
College students are changing course in search of ‘AI-proof’ majors. But no one knows what they are - JOCELYN GECKER and LINLEY SANDERS, Associated Press
Two years ago, Josephine Timperman arrived at college with a plan. She declared a major in business analytics, figuring she’d learn niche skills that would stand out on a resume and help land a good job after college. But the rise of artificial intelligence has scrambled those calculations. The basic skills she was learning in things like statistical analysis and coding can now easily be automated. “Everyone has a fear that entry-level jobs will be taken by AI,” said the 20-year-old at Miami University in Ohio. A few weeks ago, Timperman switched her major to marketing. Her new strategy is to use her undergraduate studies to build critical thinking and interpersonal skills — areas where humans still have an edge.
Monday, May 04, 2026
How AI is Reshaping the Future of Work - Stanford University Graduate School of Business
Artificial intelligence is reshaping how work happens. It is changing daily workflows, influencing how teams make decisions, and pushing leaders to rethink how organizations are structured. As with any major shift, the impact depends less on the technology itself and more on the conditions leaders create around it. As AI becomes more common across industries, the future of work will depend on leaders who can integrate these tools responsibly. AI introduces new capabilities, but leadership determines how they are applied.
Penn State launches AI literacy course for employees - EdScoop
The AI Essentials training program is designed to provide "the knowledge, skills and ethical grounding" needed to use AI responsibly. “By organizing the course into modules focused on technical knowledge, ethical awareness, critical thinking and practical application, we are empowering students, faculty and staff to engage with AI as informed, responsible participants both within the University and beyond,” Executive Vice President and Provost Fotis Sotiropoulos said in the announcement. “By aligning our AI literacy programming with the release of a new enterprise service, we are positioning Penn State at the forefront of institutions embedding comprehensive AI literacy into the undergraduate experience and in preparing our community to lead thoughtfully in an evolving technological landscape. I want to thank the AI Coordinating Council for their ongoing leadership and the instructional designers who developed this curriculum, with the support of subject matter experts, for our community.”
Sunday, May 03, 2026
GPT 5.5: Autonomous Intelligence Breakthrough - AI Revolution
OpenAI’s GPT 5.5 marks a transition toward autonomous intelligence designed for complex, long-horizon tasks, focusing on functional output over simple capability upgrades [00:24]. A key technical highlight is its efficiency: the model matches the latency of its predecessor despite its larger scale and even assisted in optimizing its own inference infrastructure during training [01:11]. Its effectiveness is demonstrated in benchmarks like Terminal Bench 2.0 and OSWorld Verified, where it scored significantly higher than competitors in navigating real computer environments and managing command-line workflows [01:33].
In specialized applications, GPT 5.5 shows advanced reasoning by contributing to new mathematical proofs and accelerating complex genomic research [10:00]. Users emphasize its "conceptual clarity" in coding and its ability to stay persistent on long-running engineering projects without premature failure [07:19]. Although its API pricing is double that of the previous version, its ability to build functional, data-driven applications from single prompts suggests a high value for enterprise-level automation and scientific discovery [07:43]. (Gemini 3 Thinking provided assistance in the summary of this review)
Meta to Cut 10 Percent of Work Force - Mike Isaac, NY Times
Meta plans to cut 10 percent of its work force, or roughly 8,000 employees, and close another 6,000 open roles, according to an internal memo on Thursday, as the company spends heavily on developing artificial intelligence. Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, employed more than 78,000 people at the end of 2025. Mark Zuckerberg, Meta’s chief executive, has said he expects much of the work being done in the technology industry to eventually be overtaken by A.I. powered systems, including coding assistants that help engineers write software.
Saturday, May 02, 2026
Research cuts are now having a chilling effect on academia - Alcino Donadel, University Business
Some experts see early and dire consequences for the science and education research community. “We’ve been hearing about the cuts coming down, but this spring, you’re really starting to see the effects,” says Chenjerai Kumanyika, assistant professor at New York University and council member for the American Association of University Professors. In February, Congress passed a fiscal year 2026 spending package that rejected Trump’s proposed 40% cuts to the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, NASA, and the Department of Energy. While the agencies saw most of their budgets restored, the Trump administration has stalled in releasing the funds.As of March 24, the NIH has only awarded 15% of its nearly $40 billion budget in academic research to institutions, according to a report from the Association of Medical Colleges.
College Students Are More Polarized Than Ever. Can AI Help? - Kathryn Palmer, Inside Higher Ed
Over the past few years, higher education institutions have adopted emerging artificial intelligence tools in an effort to enhance nearly every aspect of campus life—not just teaching and learning but also admissions, alumni networks, fundraising and advising. Now some are even experimenting with AI’s ability to advance one of the hottest trends on college campuses: fostering constructive dialogue among students, who are more divided over politics now than at any point in the past 40 years. To help bridge those divides, colleges are increasingly partnering with organizations aimed at promoting civil dialogue, including Braver Angels, BridgeUSA, the Institute for Citizens and Scholars, and the Constructive Dialogue Institute. And lately, AI is becoming part of the conversation.
Friday, May 01, 2026
This is the fastest-growing job for young workers, LinkedIn says - Mary Cunningham, CBS News
As the rise of artificial intelligence stirs anxiety over the technology taking people's jobs, AI is also opening pathways to new careers, according to LinkedIn. The fastest-growing job title for young workers on the networking platform is "AI engineer," a recent report from the company found. LinkedIn analyzed millions of member profiles to determine the number of entry-level workers hired over the last three years and the roles they were hired to fill. "It's measuring momentum for these job titles," said Kory Kantenga, the head of economics, Americas, at LinkedIn. "Companies are just gorging on AI talent."
US security agency is using Anthropic's Mythos despite blacklist, Axios reports - Reuters
The United States National Security Agency is using Anthropic's Mythos Preview AI tool despite the Pentagon hitting the company with a formal supply-chain risk designation, Axios reported on Sunday.
The Mythos Preview model was being used more widely within the department, Axios said, citing sources. Reuters could not immediately verify the report. Anthropic, the NSA and the Department of Defense did not immediately respond to requests for comment outside regular business hours. The NSA is part of the Defense Department.
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