GUEST ROOM | Higher Education’s Blind Spot

Paul Kurgan '27 is a junior in the College of Arts and Sciences studying Government and Philosophy. He can be reached at pjk239@cornell.edu.

Yale President Maurie McInnis convened a faculty committee to examine and address the problem of “widespread uncertainty about the fundamental purpose and mission of higher education.” The mandate was as follows: “Think big, tell the truth, and entertain controversial ideas.” Nearly a year later, in April  2026, the Yale Committee on Trust in Higher Education published this report. 

In the report, the committee discusses spiraling tuition costs, arbitrary admissions processes and widespread administrative political bias, just to name a few. Through a series of 20 recommendations, they call on the administration to streamline bureaucracy, build trust with trustees, resist self-censorship, create a mandatory civics class, diversify research opportunities and communicate their mission statement with greater principle and purpose.

We ought to commend the committee's efforts. It was a moment of self-examination that this crisis of purpose and legitimacy within our higher education institutions demands. Yet, the report underrepresents the greatest threat to the existence of higher education, a challenge that dominates student life more than grade inflation, political conflict, inconsistent admissions policies and even high tuition. It is the impact of AI. 

This summer, students will sit down at their office desk, sign into their monitors and share the room with large language models that can code, design slide decks and build spreadsheet models faster, cheaper and without complaint. A 2026 Anthropic report found that AI could theoretically perform 94% of tasks in computer and math occupations and 90% in office and administrative roles. 

The firms hiring students are catching on. Meta is cutting 10% of its workforce while increasing its yearly spending, mostly on AI, to $135 billion. Despite its annualized revenue reaching record highs, Morgan Stanley laid off 3% of its workforce, roughly 2,500 employees. Firms may begin to prioritize efficiency and productivity at the expense of students.  

For a university funneling nearly half its graduating class directly into the fields most exposed to automation, the fact that Yale’s report cannot find room to speak clearly and directly about this fact is a striking omission. Yale President McInnis, in a letter supporting the report, vaguely hinted at AI. She mentioned the “rise of cellphones” and “related technologies” as an imminent threat. In addition, the report only “recognizes” the advancements of AI and promises to “ensure” that graduates are prepared to “deploy, design, and improve these tools.” Our universities need to take a clear, direct and principled stance on AI. It’s time to truly “think big” and revitalize higher education.

We must rebuild higher education around the principle of human-oriented learning. It must be directed at  cultivating character and striving to form inspiring, daring and courageous human beings. The answer is not stripping mission statements of aspirational language, as Yale has recently done. The answer is by modeling our universities around the one thing AI will never be: virtuous, purposeful and irreducibly human.

While I sat in 300-person lecture halls at Cornell and attended seminars run by overwhelmed TAs, my most meaningful and inspiring moments came after class, in office hours and in one-on-one conversations with professors who engaged directly with my thinking. This desire to read deeply and learn alongside a teacher runs deeper than my own experience. Yale’s Directed Studies program, built around the close reading of great books and the cultivation of intellectual character, is expanding due to rising student demand. Students want small classes, not massive lecture halls where professors read from slideshows. They are inspired by curricula anchored in timeless texts and authors. They want to cultivate the kind of thinking and character no algorithm can replace. 

This deeply personalized educational experience is what higher education lacks, and is what AI has moved into to fill. Within seconds, LLMs can build study guides, correct mistakes, help with research and write emails autonomously. It meets the student right where they are. 

However, AI cannot inspire like a professor who has spent their entire life dedicated to an idea. AI cannot conjure the electricity of a room full of students thinking together, struggling through problems and solving them together. AI will never be able to model what it looks like to love an idea, or to journey toward something higher together.

Higher education needs to deliberately invest in spheres where AI will never be able to compete. We need to scale the Oxford tutorial system, where students sit directly across from their professors during class. Cornell can introduce oral examinations and defended essays, where AI can help prepare us, but can never be in the room with us to build an argument or explain an idea. We must also redefine professor tenure requirements, focusing on exceptional and inspiring teaching rather than just research publications.

We need not wait for universities to reform themselves structurally to seek out the education they should already be offering. Let’s choose classes that prioritize relationships with our teachers and peers. Opt into government and philosophy seminars rather than large lecture-based courses. Take Peter Katzenstein’s GOVT 3546: America, Business, and International Political Economy, where you’ll think through how states, markets, and societies shape one another across different national settings — a question the brilliant lecturer and the field’s defining academic has spent his career on. For students on the pre-med track, take BIOG 1445: Introduction to Comparative Anatomy and Physiology, Individualized Instruction, or BIOMG 3300: Principles of Biochemistry, Individualized Instruction, where TAs sit directly across from you, walk through the material together, and push you toward genuine mastery of every unit. We need structural change, but we, the students, can take initiative. 

We are at a turning point in higher education. The Yale report is directionally right in its intention: we have lost public trust, and we need to earn it back. The way forward must directly address AI, and reinvigorate a daring and aspirational mission. This new model must be anchored in the human relationship. It is a model built on cultivating character, and one that inspires students to strive toward the highest human ideals with seriousness and moral purpose.

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