What’s Threatening Higher Education Isn’t ONLY Students Using AI

As a long-time educator, I’m genuinely wondering whether the U.S. educational infrastructure (preK thru higher ed) will survive the complex threats it’s now facing.

My credentials, for what it’s worth: I’ve taught psychology at an R1 public university for 21 years. I taught math at a large public high school for 8 years. I’m currently a population health researcher at another large R1 university and a Sociology PhD candidate studying well-being and national disability policy.

Who Can Still Afford College

College is expensive in this country. Some students, like me, enlisted in the military. And for risking our lives we got the benefit of paying less for college if we made it back. That’s not why I enlisted, and I do not recommend anyone enlist for this or any reason. I’m just sharing part of why I’ve never had college debt. I also attended part time through all my earlier graduate degrees, and my most recent program has been fully funded.

Student Loan Policy Is Changing

According to the U.S. Federal Student Loan Portfolio, less than half of all federal student loans are repaid in ten years or less. Around 2.5 million borrowers are on extended repayment plans that can last up to 25 years. That is wild.

Higher ed is already cost-prohibitive for many, and huge student loan debt is weighing down an entire generation. Now it looks like costs may become an even larger barrier, given several new impending constraints on accessing federal financial aid.

How Universities Are Actually Funded

But I want to raise some other concerns, since some readers have tagged me in things recently on social media. So let’s do this.

Colleges and universities are not just buildings with students in classrooms. I don’t think many people outside academia fully realize this. (I didn’t just know this either, so I’m saying it with care.)

Higher education is a whole system: students in classes receiving instruction, yes, an also researchers conducting research, and it’s also linked by some complex funding models and institutional missions. These vary between public and private institutions.

In public systems like those where I’ve always taught, a significant portion of funding comes from research grants. That’s also true for private institutions (i.e. Harvard) but those places also have large endowments and other sources of income. To be clear, I strongly support the scholarship that happens at places like Harvard. Please keep reading.

Public Education May Be Losing Funding

Recent U.S. policy changes seem aimed at dismantling public education systems preK-12 and both public and private universities. This leaves only the private preK-12 schools standing. Noted.

I taught in a public high school, but I’m not a preK-12 policy expert. You may want to look into why your tax dollars are being pulled from public schools and so much of the research and scientific endeavors and rerouted into private ones. Private schools don’t require teacher credentials for one thing. Look closely at what else the private preK-12 schools lack, especially in terms of disability accommodations. And look into what they allow that public schools protect students from.

Research Cuts Threaten Scientific Progress

Back to higher ed, what sustains academia is not primarily tuition, even though that’s where you all feel the costs. It’s research grants.

That’s where scientific progress comes from. It’s how we figure out life, from the smallest subatomic things and microorganisms and germs, to the big and fragile planet we are trying to live upon.

Undermining U.S. academic institutions seems to be the point of most of these policies.

The cumulative effect of these policies shows (at best) a complete misunderstanding of the role that preK-12 public schools, and all colleges and universities, play in a functioning democracy.

AI in the College Classroom

Our classrooms are where librarians and teachers help young people to learn about the world and its history. This is where democratic literacy might take root. Gutting the budget for public education is a strategic sabotage of the country’s knowledge infrastructure.

And yes, reducing tuition support means fewer students can access higher education.

But a parallel problem is the decline in research funding, which combines with another growing issue: the unchecked use of AI in student work.

Students are telling me personally that they’re basically prompt-engineering their assignments at this point. The “best students” are no longer those who know their subject matter, but are those who know how to write the best prompts for the AI tools currently available. These are our future nurses, engineers, psychologists, biologists, etc.

And let me add that I don’t blame students at this point amidst this mess. Because at some point the world shifted higher education to a consumer model, making students the paying customers and “a good paying job” the product they were purchasing.

Students have been using AI since it became widely available in 2022. And in 2025, when they’re told AI will take over all the good jobs? They use the hell out of it.

– Erika Sanborne, AutisticPhD.com

Why Real Learning Is Disappearing

This whole process accelerates a rapid decline in our society’s ability to reason through its own problems. With fewer funded research opportunities and a growing reliance on generative AI, universities risk becoming less Sites of Knowledge Production and more Places of Technical Mimicry and I hate that, for everybody.

What I hate most about this (as an autistic person who values discovery and cares about students more than I am getting into here) is that students aren’t realizing what they are losing.

That moment when something clicks, when they create something that is fully their own and they get to feel the pride of it being valued? That stuff is irreplaceable. It’s kinda gone now.

What Educators Are Seeing Firsthand

What I’ve always loved about teaching through all these years has been supporting students and helping them thrive. Right now, everything seems aligned against all of the good things for students. Saying I’m sad doesn’t come close.

I don’t have the right words for what I feel. I just wanted to share some observations, in case they help anyone.

Please take what’s useful. Leave what isn’t. I’m exhausted and heartbroken. If I knew a better way to help the students of tomorrow, I would do it and I’d share that part, I assure you.

Want to discuss this topic?

*There is this post on bluesky and this thread on facebook*