Already over 70% of people teaching in higher education don’t have tenure or any hope of getting tenure. This is not a bad thing. Much of the teaching at the college level is very primitive, and it would make no sense to hand out tenure for it. In addition, most people in higher education have absolutely no interest in reading, writing, or generating ages of their own. As the current cohort of tenured academics reaches retirement, its members are not going to be replaced. We are already experiencing a dramatic reduction of tenure lines everywhere, which, again, is not a bad thing.
In the future where every University will have three to four actual professors in the humanities, we will have a healthier situation than we do now. I have observed that people outside of academia derive enjoyment from seeing something who is sincerely and passionately dedicated to a life organized around reading and learning.
This small remaining handful of professors will have enough to write about because it will take them at least a century to unravel all of the damage inflicted on the humanities in the era of massification.
I believe that all of this is good and necessary.
Clarissa's Blog 
Do you expect the number of Universities will shrink significantly as well? I think this is already happening, but the impact of AI on all of this is unclear to me. I am watching what is happening with AI with a lot of concern, both for my teaching and research. The fact that students are using it is not that surprising and I think it is easily addressable by moving a lot of assessments to class (the times of graded homework and take-home exams are over). The part that is more concerning is the push from the University for us to use AI with abandon both in our teaching and research. I do wonder if AI will replace some of the non-tenure track faculty in lower-level courses or simply put many institutions of higher education out of a job altogether. Perhaps only those Universities will survive that will provide niche human-centered education, and only a small fraction of people will be able to afford it.
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“Do you expect the number of Universities will shrink significantly as well? “
Capital no longer wants an educated public. This refers not only to higher education but in general which explains the aggressive push to dumb down as much of the population as possible.
Capital wants to draw a big fence around itself. Part of that is to keep their fail nepo babies in and everyone else out.
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I’m in languages, so we don’t notice AI at all. There’s no place for it because any attempt to cheat falls apart the moment I address the student in the language.
I don’t think NTT lecturers will be replaced. Whatever technology can do, it can’t teach. Or rather, people are unable to be taught by it. I gave the example of the free proficiency test we offer where people can get free credit for a whole semester of classes. Nobody is using that opportunity because they can’t learn with apps.
With the dumbification of the population, it will all be about socializing people into some semblance of adult behavior. Again, tech can’t do it. There will be great demand for NTT lecturers but very few tenure lines.
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I have spent some time over the past couple of months talking to people who sell different homework platforms for STEM courses as we need to make some changes in the platform we use to deliver our courses. There are duolingo-like platforms out there for STEM learning, as well as platforms that automate grading using AI (students can write out the answer, take a snapshot of their word answer or a drawing that will be graded). At this point, a lot of it needs human supervision, but a lot of the course management and grading can be automated. In all honesty, AI will probably do a better job than our teaching assistants (TAs) with grading (I have heard some faculty comparing our TA grading to a random number generator, which is, unfortunately, not completely inaccurate). I can imagine a scenario in a not too distant future where it will be possible to reduce the number of faculty and TAs that we need for introductory courses in STEM, and I do think that is something the administration will push for as faculty/TA salaries make up the major portion of the operating budget of a department. Yes, technology can’t teach, however, I am not sure if the system we currently have in place can teach either… is it really going to be that different for student learning outcomes? Obviously, the current problems we have are completely on us (there is a better way to do things than what we do now), but the rise of the AI is not helping.
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