Adapt or Die—How Universities Must Evolve To Survive Funding Cuts and AI | Opinion

Higher education in America stands now at a crossroads. Decades of state funding cuts have been joined by sudden and dramatic federal funding reductions, with the promise of more cuts ahead. Separately, AI’s rapid advancement is disrupting our industry in ways that most are only just beginning to understand. Taken together, this twin storm of pressures demands a fundamental restructuring of how universities operate. We can either adapt or die, and I for one am in favor of evolution over extinction.

For decades, universities responded to decreases in public funding by raising tuition. The playbook was simple—as states cut their contributions to us, we would pass the costs of operation on to students and families. However, universities can no longer rely on tuition increases to make up for their revenue shortfalls, as these costs have already reached breaking points that most families can no longer bear. While I’d much rather prefer the state to pick up the tab, just as they did for Baby Boomers, who could pay their annual tuition with a summer job, that simply isn’t in the cards.

Regardless, the books must balance. If we cannot generate more revenue, be it from tuition or government assistance, the only option left is for us to cut costs. It is a frightening reality, and therefore an unpopular one, but it is inevitable.

We should begin this painful process by confronting our bloated administrative apparatuses. A typical university today employs far more administrators than faculty, a stark reversal from 50 years ago. This administrative growth wasn’t inevitable, it was a choice universities made while the money was flowing freely. With said cash flow receding to a trickle, it is past time those choices were revisited.

While being entirely a distinct phenomena, the funding crisis and AI’s emergence are highly intertwined issues, with the latter offering a partial solution to the former. That is to say, universities should respond to our funding shortfall by automating administrative functions to the greatest extent possible. We don’t need armies of human schedulers coordinating classrooms, processing routine paperwork, or managing basic student services anymore. AI can handle these and many other tasks more efficiently and at a fraction of the cost compared to what people can do.

We must also acknowledge that AI’s impact is not going to be limited to administrative tasks in the Ivory Tower. This technology is already impacting our classrooms dramatically, and will be particularly disruptive for larger universities in the coming years. This is because there is very little difference in educational quality in classes that hold 50 students and those with 500. Neither format allows for meaningful personal connection and mentorship that genuinely transforms students’ thinking.

Soon, if not already, AI will provide a more interactive and personalized learning experience than a distant lecturer reading PowerPoint slides to a sea of anonymous faces. The sage on the stage model is unsustainable in the age of AI, especially at the sky-high cost it currently commands. Schools that rely on this model need to begin rethinking their pedagogical approach entirely.

To that end, slashing administrative overhead through AI automation can free up resources that should be redirected to maintain and even grow faculty numbers. This will allow for smaller, more interactive classes that represent genuine educational value in an AI era. The model most universities should adapt toward isn’t the one championed by large research intensive universities, it’s that of the small liberal arts colleges that have always emphasized intimate class sizes, cross-disciplinary thinking, and adaptable skills.

This adaptation exposes a fundamental tension for research universities, as their entire economic model currently depends on government funding for research that subsidizes other operations. Without government investment in research, these universities must either dramatically increase industry partnerships to fund their labs, shift toward a teaching-focused model with smaller classes, or attempt an awkward amalgam of both.

The institutions that will ultimately survive won’t necessarily be the largest or most prestigious, but those most responsive to changing conditions. As in any evolutionary process, there will be extinctions when programs, departments, and perhaps entire institutions cannot or will not adapt quickly enough. But what emerges on the other side will be a higher education ecosystem better suited to the world we actually live in, rather than the one that existed decades ago—one with focused administration, reasonable tuition, and education centered on human interaction rather than mass production.

Nicholas Creel is an associate professor of business law and ethics at Georgia College and State University.

The views expressed in this article are the writer’s own.