As AI automates core skills and employers shift toward hiring based on other capabilities, universities face growing pressure to reinvent themselves or risk falling behind.
Responding to the significant challenges posed by AI will involve higher education going back to basics. Essentially, this means returning to its core mission: one where it cultivates attributes and skills such as critical thinking and ethical reasoning, and context-specific research-driven learning. These are the very things that AI is unable to compete with, given its lack of creative intellect and inability to engage with counterfactual evidence, or to generate a nuanced understanding of context and ethical considerations.
A new study from the M.I.T. Media Lab found that students who used AI tools like ChatGPT to write essays showed weaker brain connectivity, reduced memory recall, and less ownership of their work compared to those who wrote without aid. Describing this as “cognitive debt,” researchers warn of troubling long-term consequences for higher education if reliance on these tools continues to grow.
To tackle this, a renewed emphasis on the research-teaching nexus is needed; one that provides a nuanced understanding of context, challenges propositions, and averts learning shortcuts. In the age of AI, educators must be committed to doing far more subject-specific research as part of their teaching preparation, and to then bring this into play in the classroom.
Such preparation is key to promoting the role of universities in advancing knowledge. At the same time, it counters the limitations of AI bots, which often deliver incomplete knowledge by merely synthesising widely-available information.
Critical thinking as a graduate attribute is being placed under enormous pressure in the evolving AI landscape – underscored by a recent report from the World Economic Forum. The report findings highlight a growing concern that university graduates usually fall desperately short in critical thinking—despite it being one of the most sought-after skills among employers.
Critical thinking is an attribute that AI struggles to instil in its users. Most AI-generated content draws from publicly available information, bypassing much of the nuanced, peer-reviewed research locked behind paywalls. As a result, it often provides intellectual shortcuts lacking depth and rigour and reflects dominant narratives rather than offering counterfactual insights that advance knowledge.
Systematic critical thinking imbues thought leadership and is essential for addressing the world's most complex and pressing challenges—from climate change and poverty alleviation to gender equity. And importantly, critical thinking is core to research inquiry. Research must therefore assume a more meaningful role in what is taught in higher education than at present so that universities produce graduates equipped with these attributes and are able to make societal impact.
Educators adopting such an approach hold a distinct advantage over AI in this respect. It helps them identify contradictions and gaps that are currently missing in the clean, crisp, and voluminous outputs generated by an AI bot. It would enable them to foster student critical thinking through their definition of problems, selection of appropriate approaches, gathering and analysis of evidence, drawing inferences, evaluation of deductions, assessment of source credibility, and substantiation of findings.
The true strength of universities lies in their commitment to a deliberate, rigorous, and iterative process of knowledge creation grounded in research. In an age increasingly dominated by the illusion of instant learning at the press of a button, we must refocus our attention on research-driven education. Only by doing so can we safeguard higher education from devolving into a shallow imitation that risks eroding the very foundations of academic excellence.
A total transformation of educational structures might be a way forward. It seems that what is needed is a structure that rewards educators for establishing one-to-one connections, and appreciates students who read deeply, write creatively, and think critically. It is also time to drastically rethink our traditional assignments and place more emphasis on in-person exams and participation-based learning activities.
Echoing the wit of George Bernard Shaw, we are reminded that “A fool’s brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry. Hence, university education.” In the face of AI, this observation serves as a timely warning— if we do not change the way we think about and practice education and research such that we reestablish the critical connection between the two, then higher education risks being marginalised and reduced to a basic commodity, one that is bereft of scholarship and adds little value to society. In short, it will simply represent what is becoming an increasingly superficial age.
Professor Shahriar Akter, is Associate Dean of Research at the Faculty of Business & Law at the University of Wollongong. Professor David Grant is Professor of Management at UNSW.