Axios: Colleges race to be AI-foward

Posted on August 15, 2026 by michelleclarke2015
 🔄 Colleges race to be AI-forward
 
Illustration of a student's desk covered in various papers, books, a laptop, and a calculator featuring binary code
Illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios. Stock: Getty Images
 
AI is forcing colleges to rethink what students need to learn — and what a degree should prepare them to do, Axios’ Megan Morrone and Herb Scribner write.

Why it matters: Employers increasingly expect new graduates to arrive with AI fluency, even as colleges are still figuring out how to teach it.

💻 Split screen: This year’s graduating high school seniors have had access to ChatGPT since freshman year, while this year’s graduating college students booed mentions of AI at commencement.

As students’ command of AI has improved, colleges have revisited whether using it should always count as cheating.

“Now anyone can get that expertise in a minute,” OpenAI’s VP for education, Leah Belsky, tells Axios. Higher education “is more coaching, mentoring, guiding students” through prompts and analyzing outputs, she says.

📈 The pressure is growing: The number of employers that expect entry-level workers to be AI-competent has nearly tripled since last fall, according to the National Association of Colleges and Employers.

🦾 Zoom out: Schools are racing to catch up. American, Purdue and Miami University in Ohio have launched AI-forward initiatives.

🎟️ Another route: Short-term certificate programs are becoming a faster, cheaper way to build AI skills — and a way for universities to reach a broader pool of students, Bloomberg reports (gift link).

In 2022, just 2% of the professional certificate market focused on AI. This year, short-term AI training programs take up nearly a third.

📚 What students are saying: UC Davis student Burton Baecker told Axios he added finance to his accounting studies after seeing how quickly AI could perform accounting tasks.

What to watch: As AI tools take on more entry-level tasks, employers are raising the bar for young workers.

New graduates are now expected to manage projects and AI agents, conduct deeper research, present findings and defend their work, Casey Evans, interim dean at American University’s Kogod School of Business, tells Axios.
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About michelleclarke2015

Life event that changes all: Horse riding accident in Zimbabwe in 1993, a fractured skull et al including bipolar anxiety, chronic fatigue …. co-morbidities (Nietzche 'He who has the reason why can deal with any how' details my health history from 1993 to date). 17th 2017 August operation for breast cancer (no indications just an appointment came from BreastCheck through the Post). Trinity College Dublin Business Economics and Social Studies (but no degree) 1997-2003; UCD 1997/1998 night classes) essays, projects, writings. Trinity Horizon Programme 1997/98 (Centre for Women Studies Trinity College Dublin/St. Patrick's Foundation (Professor McKeon) EU Horizon funded: research study of 15 women (I was one of this group and it became the cornerstone of my journey to now 2017) over 9 mth period diagnosed with depression and their reintegration into society, with special emphasis on work, arts, further education; Notes from time at Trinity Horizon Project 1997/98; Articles written for Irishhealth.com 2003/2004; St Patricks Foundation monthly lecture notes for a specific period in time; Selection of Poetry including poems written by people I know; Quotations 1998-2017; other writings mainly with theme of social justice under the heading Citizen Journalism Ireland. Letters written to friends about life in Zimbabwe; Family history including Michael Comyn KC, my grandfather, my grandmother's family, the O'Donnellan ffrench Blake-Forsters; Moral wrong: An acrimonious divorce but the real injustice was the Catholic Church granting an annulment – you can read it and make your own judgment, I have mine. Topics I have written about include annual Brain Awareness week, Mashonaland Irish Associataion in Zimbabwe, Suicide (a life sentence to those left behind); Nostalgia: Tara Hill, Co. Meath.
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