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A number of factors are converging to create a huge storm of change in higher education this coming year. Generative AI (GenAI) advances, massive federal policy shifts, broad societal economic changes, and the demographic cliff combine to create uncertainty today and change tomorrow.

What are the changes we can predict today, and how can we best prepare to respond and adapt to these sweeping changes?

One of the more positive changes will come with the ever-advancing GenAI technologies. We already have seen chatbots provide support for tutoring and associated personalized learning. The coming year will see more refined and expanded research support with a myriad of functions. There was some concern raised on the plagiarism front when ChatGPT first emerged. Fortunately, that has subsided as faculty have adopted pedagogies that enable accurate assessments.

Coming in 2025 will be the widespread use of agentic AI. As described by Nvidia:

The next frontier of artificial intelligence is agentic AI, which uses sophisticated reasoning and iterative planning to autonomously solve complex, multi-step problems. And it’s set to enhance productivity and operations across industries. Agentic AI systems ingest vast amounts of data from multiple sources to independently analyze challenges, develop strategies and execute tasks like supply chain optimization, cybersecurity vulnerability analysis and helping doctors with time-consuming tasks.

This development will enable longer-term and more complex projects that require reasoning to be completed by GenAI. We will be able to give complex tasks to our enhanced apps. For example, we can suggest that it develop an expanded course syllabus featuring the dynamic inclusion of the latest developments in the field, while creating interactive databases and simulations. In this case, we can also, at the same time, ask it to examine the syllabi for pre-requisite courses as well as more advanced courses to ensure the new course fits optimally into the curricular flow. In addition, we will be able to ask for a comparison to curricula offered by competing universities and projected needs for such skills and knowledge in business and industry. These tasks can evolve into daily monitoring of the course to analyze performance in the class, suggesting improvements as it progresses.

As Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella is reported in AI Newsroom:

AI is transforming how we learn and work, with implications for every industry. He envisions a world where AI tutors are accessible to everyone, enabling a deeper, more personalized learning experience. “The big novelty is that every student can now have access to a personalized AI tutor throughout their life.” This unprecedented access to knowledge, combined with the flexibility of tools like GitHub Copilot, opens doors for students, professionals, and lifelong learners. On the future of work, Nadella emphasizes that AI’s purpose isn’t to eliminate jobs but to improve the quality of work. By automating tedious tasks, AI allows professionals to focus on higher-value activities.

A less-positive impact on colleges and universities from the advances in GenAI in the coming year is the potential for businesses to expand their own e-learning platforms to provide training to their employees rather than outsourcing that learning to the higher education institutions. Cypher Learning earlier this month predicted:

Personalized workplace development will become the new standard, displacing old-school, one-size-fits-all training. With hang-onto-your-hat speed, personalized training is accelerating rapidly, becoming more feasible both economically and logistically for large enterprises with thousands of employees. Modern learning platforms, powered by conscientiously deployed AI, drive this shift, allowing companies to provide dynamic, on-demand upskilling tailored to individual needs. By 2025, we’ll see bite-sized lessons seamlessly fitting into unique workflows, empowering companies to reduce worker-error rates, boost competitiveness, and turn workplace development from a cost center into a value-generating engine.

The newly-elected administration in Washington promises major changes in the regulation, administration and future of higher education. As reported by Natalie Schwartz in Higher Ed Dive:

Donald Trump has been elected the next president of the U.S., setting the stage for dramatic changes to the policies and regulations that impact colleges once he returns to the White House in January. Trump campaigned on several polarizing higher education proposals, including vowing to shut down the U.S. Department of Education and roll back the Biden administration’s contested Title IX regulations, which provide protections for LGBTQI+ students…. ‘So far, it hasn’t looked like even a lot of Republicans in Congress want to do that,’ said Jonathan Fansmith, senior vice president of government relations and national engagement at the American Council on Education, the higher education sector’s top lobby. Sweeping regulatory changes, meanwhile, are all but certain. ‘There is a lot of area for the administration to exert its authority and its will through administrative action where they need nothing from Congress to do it,’ Fansmith said.

Broad international economic changes are promised through the use of tariffs by the incoming administration.  Ryan Ermey of CNBC writes:

President Trump has said he plans to install a blanket tariff of 10% to 20% on all imports, with additional tariffs of 60% to 100% on goods brought in from China. In the September Presidential debate, Trump characterized the plan as a way to extract money from rival nations. A sweeping tariff policy will kill two birds with one stone, Trump says: It could find a new source of revenue for the U.S. government, which could offset losses from lowering or eliminating certain forms of income tax, while extracting money from rival governments.

These tariffs will bring uncertain impacts on the cost of goods, resulting in hits to the income of potential college students and their families as they consider college affordability. It also is likely to increase the operating costs of universities by raising costs of goods, at least in the short term.

Meanwhile, the long-predicted demographic cliff is to arrive in 2025 as reported earlier this year in the Chronicle of Higher Education:

The consensus view is that America will hit a peak of around 3.5 million high-school graduates sometime near 2025. After that, the college-age population is expected to shrink across the next five to 10 years by as much as 15 percent. For many colleges, like those in regions of the country that have experienced decades of declining birth rates, the fallout has been painfully self-evident for years.

The confluence of all of these disruptions in 2025 predict a challenging year ahead for higher education. Has your institution prepared for the fallout from these developments? Who is coordinating the response to these disparate trends? Are you following the trends and considering the implications for your career as well as for your department, college and university? I encourage you to closely follow industry publications such as Inside Higher Education, engage in professional associations such as UPCEA the online and professional education association, read relevant blogs, podcasts and credible posters in social media to ensure you can identify and track these storms of change that are on the verge of altering higher education. A hurricane of change is coming; now is the time to prepare.

 

This article was originally published in Inside Higher Ed’s Transforming Teaching & Learning blog.