How Artificial Intelligence is Forcing Professors to Confront the Purpose of Higher Education

The rise of generative AI on college campuses has triggered professors and students to reexamine the aim of education. Some are embracing the integration of AI into the college classroom, while others are more resistant. Using interviews with five professors at the University of Chicago, I find that their perspectives on AI reflect their deeper opinions on higher education as either an outcome or process-focused endeavor—two viewpoints which will be explained in this paper. Pro-AI professors seem to focus on outcome, while anti-AI professors seem to see process as more important. This makes the debate over AI integration all the more salient at UChicago, a university currently caught between an outcome and a process-focused model.