How AI could erase higher education’s soul

The modern university is undergoing a quiet revolution—one that threatens to strip it of its centuries-old soul. Artificial intelligence, with its algorithmic tutors and hyper-efficient credentialing systems, promises to democratise education like never before. Yet in doing so, it risks eroding the very essence of what makes higher learning transformative: the slow, messy, profoundly human process of intellectual maturation.

This is not merely a technological shift, but a philosophical one—a collision between digital precision and analog depth. The outcome will determine whether universities remain crucibles of wisdom or devolve into credential factories optimised for the attention economy.

Digital education platforms excel at what they do: scaling knowledge with machine-like efficiency. AI tutors like Khanmigo adapt in real time to student needs, offering personalised instruction at a fraction of the cost of human professors. Massive open online courses (MOOCs) from Harvard, MIT, and Stanford have made Ivy League lectures accessible to millions. Algorithms now grade essays, detect plagiarism, and even suggest research directions—tasks that once required human labour.

The benefits are undeniable. A 2024 study from the University of London found that students using AI tutors performed 22 per cent better in STEM subjects than those in traditional lectures. Startups like Coursera and Udacity have slashed the cost of professional certifications, enabling mid-career workers to upskill without quitting their jobs. For developing nations, where access to elite institutions was once a pipe dream, AI-powered education could be revolutionary.

But this efficiency comes with hidden trade-offs. When learning becomes transactional—reduced to bite-sized modules, automated quizzes, and instant feedback—something vital is lost. The university was never just a content delivery system; it was a space for intellectual friction, where ideas clashed, evolved, and occasionally transformed the world.

Walk into any great university library—the Bodleian at Oxford, Widener at Harvard—and you feel it: the weight of centuries of thought, the quiet hum of human curiosity. These spaces were never just about accessing information; they were about living with ideas. The same is true of seminar rooms where debates rage past their allotted hour, or dormitory bull sessions where half-formed theories get tested over midnight coffee.

This is the analog dimension of education: slow, embodied, and gloriously inefficient. It’s where Nobel laureate Richard Feynman developed his famous diagrams not through optimised learning algorithms, but through years of blackboard scribbling and heated discussions with peers. It’s where philosopher Hannah Arendt refined her theories of totalitarianism not via AI-summarised texts, but through painstaking engagement with primary sources—margins filled with handwritten objections and epiphanies.

Neuroscience suggests this inefficiency is essential. A 2023 Cambridge study found that students who took handwritten notes retained complex concepts 30 per cent longer than those who typed. The physical act of writing—the friction of pen on paper—appears to deepen cognitive processing. Similarly, face-to-face debate activates regions of the brain associated with empathy and critical thinking in ways Zoom seminars do not.

Yet these analog experiences are disappearing. Lecture halls sit half-empty as students opt for on-demand video courses. Campus newspapers—once training grounds for aspiring journalists—have shuttered or gone digital. Even office hours, once sacred spaces for mentorship, are being replaced by chatbot Q&A forums.

We’ve been here before. When Gutenberg’s press exploded across Europe in the 15th century, it revolutionised access to knowledge—but at a cost. Medieval scholars had cultivated vast mental libraries, memorising entire texts through elaborate mnemonic systems. As books proliferated, these cognitive muscles atrophied.

“Writing,” Socrates warned in Phaedrus, “will produce forgetfulness in the souls of those who learn it.” He feared that relying on external records would erode internal wisdom. Today’s AI revolution risks a similar erosion. Why wrestle with Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason when ChatGPT can summarise it in seconds? Why labour through archival research when an algorithm can surface “relevant” sources in milliseconds?

The danger is not just laziness, but a fundamental rewiring of cognition. Research from Stanford’s Digital Education Lab (2024) found that students who relied on AI for essay drafting showed decreased ability to sustain complex arguments unaided. Like GPS atrophying our spatial memory, AI tutors may weaken our capacity for deep, independent thought.

The solution is not to reject digital tools, but to deliberately preserve analog spaces within them. Some institutions are leading the way:

•             MIT’s “Slow Seminars” mandate device-free, discussion-only classes where students engage primary texts without digital aids.

•             The University of Chicago’s “Humanities Lab” pairs AI research tools with intensive Socratic dialogue, forcing students to defend their interpretations against peers.

•             Oxford’s “Analog Term” experiment requires philosophy students to handwrite all essays for one semester, banning digital drafting.

The goal is balance. AI should handle what it does best—scaling access, personalising drills, automating grading—while humans reclaim what they do best: fostering wisdom through friction.

At its core, this is a debate about what education is for. The German concept of Bildung—the formation of character through knowledge—captures what’s at risk. A world where learning is reduced to credentialing and prompt engineering may produce skilled workers, but will it produce thinkers? Citizens? Humans capable of grappling with the next Critique of Pure Reason, not just the next software update?

The early 20th century saw a similar crisis when industrial models of education—standardised testing, factory-style schools—rose to meet workforce demands. We got economic growth, but also what Max Weber called “specialists without spirit.” Today, as AI threatens to automate not just manual labour but intellectual labor, the stakes are higher.

Walk through the ruins of the Library of Alexandria, and you’re reminded that civilisations are measured not by their data storage, but by how they nurture minds. The AI revolution could be higher education’s greatest liberation—or its final surrender to the attention economy.

The path forward isn’t Luddism, but vigilance. We must build systems that use digital tools to democratise access while fiercely protecting analog spaces where wisdom grows slowly, unpredictably, and irreplaceably. Otherwise, we risk creating a world of impeccable databases and empty souls—where every question has an answer, but no one remembers how to wonder.

*Dr. Ariful Islam, Sunway Business School (AACSB), Malaysia and Tasnia Fatin (PhD Scholar), Putra Business School (AACSB), Malaysia