One Roadmap for Colleges That Want to Survive AI

The next higher-ed disruption might look less like Harvard 2.0 and more like OnlyFans for professors. That's the analogy floated in a New Yorker interview with Hollis Robbins, a University of Utah humanities scholar who thinks the era of artificial general intelligence (AGI) could force a brutal shakeout across American campuses. Her core argument: As universities standardize courses and treat students as "customers," they've quietly made professors interchangeable—and therefore easily replaced by AI. "We tell the student, 'You're special,' and we tell the faculty, 'You're not special.' This is the tension and the problem that is plaguing higher education and what's made it so vulnerable to AI," says Robbins.

Robbins predicts that up to 70% of faculty jobs will vanish, and that those professors who remain standing will be the ones who can prove they know things AI doesn't. (She's an expert in the African American sonnet tradition, for instance.) In her vision, surviving institutions will be smaller, stranger, and built around "edge-of-knowledge" specialists whose expertise, mentorship, and networks can't be replicated by chatbots. That could mean more bespoke, apprenticeship-style learning with niche experts—and, in an "OnlyProfessors" model, credentials tied to individual star academics rather than schools. "Big flagship" universities with sports and Greek life will likely endure, she says, but others will not. What remains, she predicts, will look nothing like what we know now. (Read the full piece here.)