5 Predictions on How AI Will Shape Higher Ed in 2026
Kathryn Palmer
January 5, 2026
Some education experts are prepared for the sector’s growing disenchantment with generative artificial intelligence. Others believe it will improve college systems and processes.
For the higher education sector, 2026 is likely to be another year of grappling with the power of generative artificial intelligence to reshape research, teaching, learning and campus operations.
Those conversations have evolved since November 2022, when Open AI’s ChatGPT—capable of generating essays, images and homework answers in seconds—went mainstream. Soon after, numerous other companies launched similarly powerful large language models, such as Google’s Gemini and Anthropic’s Claude.
In 2023, many colleges and universities focused on fears that students would use AI as a tool for cheating. Even so, by 2024 more universities had begun adopting AI-powered tools, though the sector was still figuring out how best to use them; an Inside Higher Ed survey of chief technology officers from that year showed that just 9 percent said they believed higher education was prepared for AI’s rise. Despite that, tech companies and universities alike both bet big on AI in 2025.
