AI is an opportunity for higher education, not a threat

You’ve seen the headlines: college students are outsourcing their education to AI tools.

The early anecdotes, research and surveys raise valid concerns, but this narrative is too quick to paint a picture of a technology undermining academic integrity, eroding critical thinking or even replacing the role of educators or universities altogether.

I lead the University of Nebraska at Omaha as its chancellor, and I see a different story. It wasn’t long ago that calculators raised questions about academic rigor in math classrooms. Some of us are old enough to remember how “CliffsNotes” was a dirty word in writing courses.

The emergence of the internet and Wikipedia once stirred fears about plagiarism. If you go far back enough, even Socrates had his concerns about the written word, saying “Th