Good morning, and welcome to Thursday, April 10. Today’s briefing was written by Laura Krantz, with contributions from Rick Seltzer. Brock Read wrote the Footnote. Julia Piper compiled Transitions. Get in touch: dailybriefing@chronicle.com.

What to do about teaching AI

More than two years after ChatGPT began to reshape the world, colleges are still working out how much they owe it to their students to teach them about AI, our Beth McMurtrie writes.

Some colleges believe it’s important to create an “AI-literate campus,” but they’re still in the minority. These institutions believe that as generative AI reshapes the world and the economy, students must understand how it works, how to use it effectively, how to evaluate its output, and how to account for its weaknesses and dangers.

• Just 14 percent of college leaders said their campus had adopted AI literacy as an institutional or general-education learning outcome, according to a recent survey by the American Association of Colleges and Universities.
• Just 22 percent of respondents said their college had an institutionwide approach to AI, according to a November survey by Educause, a nonprofit focused on technology in higher education.

Campuses leaning into AI literacy are taking a range of approaches:

• The University of Delaware created an AI working group that designed training programs for people across campus.
• Eighteen universities, including Delaware, joined a project by Ithaka S+R to study how AI will affect teaching, learning, and research on their campuses.
• The University of Virginia paid 51 faculty members $5,000 each to improve their colleagues’ AI literacy through workshops, book groups, and consultations.
• Arizona State University signed a deal with OpenAI to create an “AI Innovation Challenge,” resulting in more than 600 proposals for integrating the technology into teaching, research, or “the future of work.”
• The University of Baltimore held an AI summit at which local community and business leaders met with students and faculty members to discuss AI literacy.

Many faculty members remain skeptical that AI literacy merits a place in curricula. Most remain concerned about unethical or excessive use of AI by students. Many instructors see generative AI as a threat to learning and continue to prohibit its use in class, according to a survey by Ithaka S+R.

• Faculty unions have raised alarms at the possibility of some of their work being replaced by AI.
• Professors have pushed back against some multimillion-dollar deals with AI companies.
• There’s particular concern among humanities professors, who feel the technology is especially maladapted to their disciplines.
• More professors are willing to use AI for routine tasks. One professor said she saved time by asking ChatGPT to help create a grading rubric.

However faculty feel, students are already adopting AI into their daily lives. Many use tools like ChatGPT to start papers or projects, summarize long texts, brainstorm projects, learn about new topics, and revise writing, an analysis by OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, found.

One factor forcing the issue on campuses: The industries students enter are increasingly steeped in AI, especially fields like health care and banking.

• AI is reshaping organizational structures and career paths within industries, as it takes over both routine tasks and those requiring technical expertise.
• Thirty percent of respondents to a recent survey said they had used generative AI in their jobs. The tools are more commonly used by younger workers, people with more education and higher incomes, and employees in industries like customer service, marketing, and information technology.

The bigger question: It’s still too soon to say whether a critical mass of professors will be willing to learn and teach about AI, even if they dislike it. Many see their role as fighting against wealthy tech companies trying to force untested technologies on the public. But at a time when colleges must increasingly make a case for their relevance and value, can they afford not to embrace a force that’s quickly becoming ubiquitous?

Quick hits

• Certificates drove undergraduate growth: The number of students earning undergraduate degrees increased for the first time in three years due to record growth in students completing certificates, the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center announced today. The number of students earning bachelor’s degrees dropped to its lowest point since 2016, however, and the number earning associate degrees was the lowest in a decade. (National Student Clearinghouse Research Center)
• President placed on leave: The West Virginia Council for Community and Technical College Education placed Pam Alderman, president of Southern West Virginia Community and Technical College, on paid leave Monday and asked her to vacate her office. Alderman and the board have been at odds for several months amid allegations that Alderman committed ethics violations, tried to buy a luxury vehicle with taxpayer dollars, and fired three employees who filed grievances against her. (WOWK)
• Trump cuts Princeton climate study funding: The U.S. Department of Commerce said Tuesday it will strip nearly $4 million from the New Jersey institution because the awards are “no longer in keeping with the Trump Administration’s priorities.” One project studied the fluctuation of water availability as a result of global warming. (Axios)
• Trump freezes funds for Cornell, Northwestern: Cornell University could lose more than $1 billion and Northwestern University $790 million in federal grants from the Departments of Agriculture, Defense, Education, and Health and Human Services amid investigations into both universities for alleged antisemitism and racial discrimination. (The New York Times)
• U. of Georgia system to consolidate two institutions: East Georgia State College will become part of Georgia Southern University, the Board of Regents announced Tuesday. The Swainsboro campus, about 180 miles southeast of Atlanta, had about 1,800 students last fall, down from 3,000 in 2015. The system is working to reduce its institutions from 35 in 2011 to 25 this year. (The Atlanta Journal-Constitution)

Quote of the day

“The student-aid agency simply cannot do what it is legally required to do.”

— Bradley Custer, one of 2,000 employees recently fired from the U.S. Department of Education.

In a column for his hometown paper, The Canton Repository, Custer says the closure is bad for Northeast Ohio’s colleges and students and threatens the livelihood of public servants in Ohio and across the country. He said he joined the Office of Federal Student Aid two years ago because he had used loans to finance his own education and wanted to help “fix the broken federal student-loan system.”

Stat of the day

10.2 percent

That’s how much less tenure-track faculty members were paid in 2024-25 than they were before the pandemic, after adjusting for inflation, according to new data from the College and University Professional Association for Human Resources, or CUPA-HR.

Tenure-track faculty had the biggest gulf between their pre-pandemic and current salaries. Over nine years, tenure-track salaries have never risen faster than the rate of inflation, according to CUPA-HR. That means these faculty members have essentially seen their salaries decrease over that time.

Other employees lost money after inflation last year, too. Non-tenure-track teaching faculty are paid 7.6 percent less than they were, after adjusting for inflation. Staff members had the smallest gap, 2.8 percent.

The bigger picture: The pay picture only adds to concerns about the sector losing talent in the face of hostility from the Trump administration.

Transitions

• Alicia Córdoba, president of Aquinas College, in Michigan, has stepped down after less than three years.
• Thomas Poon, executive vice president and provost at Loyola Marymount University, has been named president.
• Keith Marzullo, dean of the College of Information at the University of Maryland at College Park, has been named dean of the Manning College of Information and Computer Sciences at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.
• Jonathan Holloway, president of Rutgers University, will step down and become president of the Henry Luce Foundation.

To submit a new-hire announcement, email people@chronicle.com. You can also find Transitions online here.

Footnote

When the Yeshiva University Maccabees and the Lehman College Lightning met Tuesday afternoon in Teaneck, N.J., for a Division III baseball tilt, an eminently stoppable force was set to collide with an easily movable object. Lehman, a public institution in the Bronx, was nursing a 42-game losing streak, stretching back to May 2023. Yeshiva, an Orthodox Jewish institution with four New York City campuses, had suffered 99 straight defeats, and had lost games this season by scores of 36-0, 29-1, and 30-3. Something would have to give.

Early on, Yeshiva jumped on Lehman’s starting pitcher, Justin Chamorro, plating a couple of runs in the first inning and claiming a 5-1 lead after two. But a couple of hours later — after four fielding errors, three runners caught stealing, a pickoff, and a balk — Lehman had worked the game into extra innings.

In the top of the eighth (Division III teams play seven-inning games), Lehman promptly pushed the winning run home. Appropriately enough, it came not on a hit, but on a bases-loaded hit-by-pitch. Then Chamorro mowed Yeshiva down in the bottom of the frame to close things out. He ended up striking out 13 Yeshiva hitters in a complete-game win.

Chamorro’s resolve is college sports at its best. “If there was going to be 12 innings, I was going to pitch all 12 innings,” he told MLB.com after the game. “If I was going to lose, it was by my own sword.”

So there you have it: Lehman earns a thrilling victory, and Yeshiva’s losing streak reaches 100. When, if ever, might the Maccabees get off the schneid?

Happily, we already know the answer.

Lehman’s win was just the first half of a doubleheader. In the second game, Yeshiva again raced out to an early lead. This time they held on for a 9-5 triumph — and their first one-game winning streak in more than three years.