Every autumn, college campuses across America awaken with a sacred rhythm. Cars pull up to dormitories. Parents unload boxes and mini-fridges, sometimes tinged with nostalgia, sometimes with anxiety. Students step into rooms fragrant with fresh paint and unspoken possibility. Each arrival marks the start of a new academic year, another cohort of 18-year-olds stepping from adolescence toward adulthood.But this year, a subtle unease hovers in the air. Beyond the usual jitters about new courses and social adjustments lies a deeper uncertainty, about the very essence of teaching and learning. Higher education, long buffeted by rising costs, diminishing trust, and cultural friction, now faces a threat both insidious and profound: artificial intelligence.
The AI conundrum
James D. Walsh, a seasoned investigative journalist, spent years exploring hidden worlds — from casinos to college campuses. His latest inquiry, chronicled in New York Magazine under the provocative title, “Everyone Is Cheating Their Way Through College,” asks a question few administrators dare confront: What is AI really doing to higher education?Walsh’s answer is stark. The core mission of college, engaging deeply with content, reflecting critically, and producing original work, is being outsourced to algorithms. AI tools like ChatGPT can mimic student thinking with astonishing fidelity, rendering many assignments indistinguishable from human effort. Studies show professors detect AI-generated papers only three percent of the time. Students, Walsh reports, see AI not as a supplement but as an essential partner, if not a lifeline, in achieving academic success.
The death of thinking
Learning is not merely arriving at answers; it is wrestling with complexity, struggling with nuance, and refining one’s own judgment. When machines supplant that struggle, the very purpose of higher education erodes. Yet most institutions treat AI as a benign innovation, an inevitability to integrate rather than a threat to challenge. The consequence is a narrowing of pedagogy: teaching students to collaborate with AI rather than to think independently.Herein lies a paradox. If AI becomes the arbiter of intellectual skill, the educator’s role risks obsolescence. Colleges face two paths: surrender quietly, letting AI define learning, or mount a vigorous defense of human-centric education. Remarkably, the latter option is rarely considered, as the prevailing sentiment among administrators is resignation — “If you can’t beat them, join them.”
Colleges as sanctuaries
To understand the stakes, one must remember why colleges exist. Initially designed to train clergy, these institutions evolved to cultivate educated citizens, equip skilled professionals, and advance knowledge. At their core, colleges are intentional oases — spaces removed from the relentless demands of the wider world, where reflection, discourse, and intellectual risk-taking are cultivated.AI’s pervasiveness outside these walls only underscores the necessity of preserving this sanctuary. Just as travelers willingly pay a premium for signal-free retreats, students crave environments that resist the encroachment of technology. Colleges that champion human learning — through dialogue, contemplation, and community — may not lose relevance; they may reclaim it.
The real threat
The true peril is not that AI will outthink us, but that we will cease thinking. Colleges must remain sites where curiosity flourishes, where knowledge and wisdom are distinct, and where growth is valued over mere performance. They must defend spaces where human inquiry remains unmediated by machines.A call to actionEducators face a profound assignment: to ensure that at least one corner of the world insists on authentic thinking. This is not nostalgia for tradition, but a defense of the human capacity to reason, imagine, and struggle. Colleges must lead, not by embracing every tool, but by safeguarding the ancient instruments of learning — conversation, contemplation, and community.In the age of AI, being human is the curriculum. And it is high time our colleges remembered that.
