Is AI key to balancing uni budgets and student demands?

14 October 2024

Overhead photo of a woman working on a laptop while sitting in a brown lounge chair

What are some ways generative AI could change tertiary education for both students and academics? UTS's Dr Amanda White shares her thoughts.

Universities around the world are being squeezed financially due to decreasing revenue from students, decreased government funding and increased competition for research grants. At the same time, feedback that students are in need of greater support in order to achieve the best outcomes.

There is also a rising number of students needing accessibility and mental health support that universities have a duty of care (and regulatory requirement) to provide. This demand for flexible learning needs to be met with flexible support options.

Besides relying on the goodwill of university staff to go above and beyond, generative AI (GenAI) has the potential to provide this flexible on-demand support.

Study support

Students have often turned to readily available resources such as YouTube and the internet to support their learning, but GenAI has the capability to provide customised and personalised support for students. The NSW Department of Education has been trialling an AI tool to help students, and those involved in the trial self-reported improvements in their learning.

In the higher education space, Cogniti.AI (led by Professor Danny Liu from the University of Sydney) is an off-the-shelf solution for institutions looking to create GenAI- based chat bots to support student learning and assessment, and a US university found AI tutors helped students twice as much as human tutors.

GenAI and mental health

Beyond help with classes, AI can integrate into auxiliary services that universities increasingly need to provide to students. It is well accepted that mental health is declining among young people due to stressors such as social media. But if you’ve attempted to access mental health support, – you’ll know that it can be extremely difficult, something the Federal Government recognises. What if GenAI might be able to fill this gap?

Individuals have reported using ChatGPT for therapy, and mental health professionals have started evaluating the efficacy of GenAI to provide therapeutic support. This could be extremely important to university students, many of whom have limited financial resources, which hinders their ability to access more traditional mental health support services.

However, there are risks, including inconsistencies in advice or misinformation that might cause harm when using GenAI that is not specifically designed for mental health support and therapy.

Teacher's (AI) assistant

From the perspective of staff working within higher education, GenAI tools can be used to create content for assessments, help with marking and feedback, and supporting student skills development. However, there are also risks for educators and institutions, – including implications for complying with modern slavery laws where tools/models have engaged in predatory practices related to labour in training these models.

For educators, flipped learning is a common practice where educators make online learning content featuring their face and voice. Is there a risk that universities might use this data to create AI versions of academics for future use? Why hire an academic to make content when you could use GenAI to create scripts and generate videos with tools like Synthesia.io? If an academic left a university or passed away, GenAI could be used to keep that teacher ‘alive’. These hypotheticals and more are certainly issues that our institutions will need to tackle in order to integrate GenAI in an ethical, responsible and respectful way.

My final thoughts have to do with how students might feel about their university experience being augmented by GenAI. What are student perceptions if there is greater reliance on AI? What is the value of universities if we provide education and learning support via AI?

These are all incredibly complex issues with no straightforward right or wrong answer. However, with AI already making inroads into nearly every industry and profession, universities and educators need to think more critically about GenAI and how it can be used to help – rather than hinder – the student learning and staff experience.

Keen to learn more? UTS’s Dr Amanda White will be appearing alongside a panel of experts discussing GenAI and the future of education at SXSW Sydney 2024. Join the conversation here.