Supporting students in their professional and personal development will become a “primary focus” of higher education in the years ahead as artificial intelligence changes the university model, according to the next chair of England’s higher education regulator.
Edward Peck, who is stepping down as vice-chancellor of Nottingham Trent University this summer to become chair of the Office for Students, said activities once seen as “extracurricular” are likely to become “core aspects” of a degree.
Peck, who is also standing down as the government’s higher education student support champion, has written a paper along with two colleagues who supported him in that role that outlines “10 trends that will change higher education”.
Published by the Higher Education Policy Institute (Hepi), it warns that the long-established approach to higher education will need to “keep on adapting in order to flourish” in the age of generative AI.
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The development of AI tools could allow learning to be personalised, with each student able to follow their own interests and learn over a time period of their choosing, according to the paper.
In such a “reshaped curricula”, understanding the limitations of, and ethical considerations around, generative AI could be more important to employers than the ability to recall knowledge, they write.
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The paper says higher education’s “unique selling point to students” in this new reality will be to shift the campus-based learning experience away from conveying academic content towards programmes that enable professional, vocational and personal development.
“The provision of broadly defined student support will become a primary, rather than a secondary, focus. In other words, what have in the past been viewed as support, co-curricular or extra-curricular activities will move into the mainstream as core aspects of the value of a degree.”
Trends in recent years – particularly since the Covid-19 pandemic – have been towards remote learning. But, according to the paper, a less knowledge-focused campus could facilitate the face-to-face engagement that “has been the distinctive feature of higher education for over a thousand years”.
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The authors, who also include Ben McCarthy, student support champion project manager, and Jenny Shaw, student support champion consultant, believe that generative AI will have a “major role” to play in identifying vulnerable or distressed students.
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They said that the technology will change but not replace the roles of specialist student support staff, who will still be needed to navigate the safety and ethical concerns around the use of AI.
Academics’ jobs will change too, they say, away from “imparting understanding of knowledge derived from their own research or scholarship…towards creating curricula that prioritise higher order thinking skills, such as complex analysis, real-world application and critical thinking”.
The paper also makes the case that England’s 2012 tuition fee rise – from £3,375 to £9,000 – was an opportunity for the sector to “embrace a customer service ethos wholeheartedly” because that was what students, their parents and the commentariat would come to expect from this level of funding.
It also outlines the need for providers to recruit more older learners amid a population decline, address the needs of a more diverse international student population, and prepare for a greater focus on regionality within the UK sector.
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