The Associated Press recently published a story examining the paradoxes of the 2025 economy. According to the article, economic growth in the third quarter reached 4.3%, the highest rate in nearly two years. Consumer spending also demonstrated strength. However, troubling signs accompanied this growth: inflation remained elevated, and unemployment increased by approximately 0.5 percentage points over the previous year. Most concerning were several months in which the country experienced net job losses—a trend not witnessed since the pandemic recession.
Two observations from the report warrant particular attention. First, the growth in consumer spending was concentrated primarily among higher-income earners. Second, many companies expressed reluctance to hire due to uncertainties surrounding the potential impacts of artificial intelligence.
While recently reviewing job postings for college presidencies, I noted that one position profile explicitly stated the successful candidate would need to integrate AI into the institution’s programs and processes. This represents not merely a preference but an essential requirement in today’s higher education landscape. AI transcends the boundaries of conventional technology; it constitutes a transformative force comparable to the Industrial Revolution in its potential to fundamentally reshape society.
This reality presents a unique challenge for college leaders. While each institution articulates its own distinct mission, virtually all emphasize, in various forms, the betterment of society. No pathway to the American Dream proves more reliable than education. Though success is not universal, the empirical evidence is unequivocal: individuals with college degrees experience higher employment rates, superior health outcomes, greater civic engagement through voting, lower incarceration rates, and contribute to the economy at substantially higher levels than their peers without degrees.
Yet AI presents both opportunities and challenges to this fundamental mission. How do college officials integrate AI into their own institutional processes while simultaneously protecting employment? This question carries particular weight given that many institutions rank among the largest employers in their respective communities. How do we maintain diverse program offerings without fully understanding AI’s ultimate impact on the disciplines we teach? How do we prepare students for AI’s potential disruption without fostering excessive dependence on what remains relatively nascent technology? Perhaps most critically, how do we embrace and advance a technology that could disproportionately harm lower-income community members—the very population highlighted in the Associated Press article’s discussion of employment, consumer spending, and affordability?
These questions demand careful deliberation. As an educator, I believe the answer lies in balancing the efficiency AI promises with our fundamental responsibility to our communities. Four strategic approaches can help colleges achieve this equilibrium.
1. Enhance employee efficiency: Every higher education institution performs numerous essential functions, but ultimately these functions exist to serve students. We must identify opportunities to deploy AI for routine administrative tasks that currently prevent frontline employees from providing personalized student attention. My institution’s experience with an AI chatbot exemplifies this approach. We previously maintained a live chat function staffed by advisors working rotating shifts. The AI chatbot implementation now answers questions with over 90% accuracy, liberating advisors to dedicate more time to direct student engagement. Critically, no advisor positions were eliminated; instead, their roles evolved to emphasize what they do best—connecting with students.
2. Prioritize skill development: I recently participated in training covering various AI platforms and found it exceptionally valuable. Throughout the session, I continuously considered how we might develop curricula demonstrating how students could leverage AI within their chosen fields to achieve the efficiency gains described above. We must show students how to utilize AI for budget analysis, research enhancement, and productivity improvement. These competencies will enable them to deliver unique value to organizations and, ultimately, strengthen their employability.
3. Apply AI to higher-level problem solving: Rather than allowing AI to negatively impact lower-income workers, higher education should harness AI to address persistent community challenges. Properly developed AI systems could deliver accessible, preventative healthcare services, create more efficient mechanisms for targeted social service delivery, and identify solutions to longstanding environmental equity issues. Our institutions, as anchor institutions and research centers, are uniquely positioned to lead these initiatives within our communities.
4. Ensure economic benefits reach all income levels: Perhaps our most pressing imperative is preventing AI from creating a K-shaped economy that exclusively benefits high earners. We must research methods to leverage AI in reducing everyday costs for all citizens, regardless of economic status. This goal presents considerable difficulty, but it must serve as a guiding principle.
We stand at the threshold of an AI revolution, but we retain the capacity to influence this technology’s trajectory. We must be guided by robust ethical standards fundamentally committed to improving people’s lives. This commitment to societal betterment must remain the core mission of higher education—not merely as aspirational rhetoric, but as the practical framework through which we evaluate every decision regarding AI integration.
The question before us is not whether AI will transform higher education and society, but whether we will shape that transformation to serve our foundational values. Our response to this challenge will determine whether AI becomes a force for expanding opportunity or deepening inequality. As educators and institutional leaders, we bear the responsibility not only to adapt to technological change but to ensure that change aligns with our enduring commitment to equity, access, and the common good. The choices we make today regarding AI implementation will echo through generations of students and communities we serve. We must choose wisely, deliberately, and always with our mission at the forefront of our decisions.
The Everyday Human 