American Kogod Dean: How Higher Ed is Missing The AI Revolution by: David Marchick on January 31, 2025 | 316 Views Dean, American Kogod School of Business January 31, 2025 Copy Link Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Email Share on LinkedIn Share on WhatsApp Share on Reddit While American University’s Kogod School of Business has been a leader in integrating artificial intelligence into its business school curriculum, our recent visit to Silicon Valley demonstrated an accelerating gap between academia and the future — a gap that creates risk to the relevance and fundamental role of higher education in creating and sharing knowledge. By academic standards, our school has been moving on AI at light-speed. Since last fall, we have integrated AI into undergraduate and graduate programs, launched faculty training and created an AI speaker series. Our faculty now offer more than 40 AI-infused courses, teaching students to use AI for investments, research, presentations, data analysis, decision-making, and business innovation. Faculty are also leveraging AI in research and exploring its impact on business challenges. Poets&Quants called our initiative “the most consequential AI transformation in business education.” Our AI journey began when Google executives Kent Walker and Karan Bhatia described to students how AI would fundamentally change day-to-day life on earth. At another event, Venture Capital CEO Brett Wilson was asked by a student if his job would be replaced by AI. Wilson’s answer: “You won’t be replaced by AI, but you could be replaced by someone who knows AI if you don’t.” That moment cemented our resolve to adapt with speed. But Silicon Valley humbled us. The tech world and academia could not be more different, like two species evolving in parallel, at different speeds, with little overlap. In San Francisco, billboards advertise competing AI technologies and systems. We took driverless cars between meetings. AI executives began conversations by affirming their pro-human stance, as if that was a question. AI has already become a companion for Gen Z; soon, it will function as their agent. Universities are run by leaders in their 60s and 70s; we met with twenty-something senior tech executives, many with less than six months’ tenure in their roles. David Marchick: “In a world increasingly shaped by AI, strong communication and effective collaboration will define the leaders who can navigate complex human interactions and drive innovation” Indeed, we departed San Francisco aware that universities are too stuck in their ways, unable to change quickly even when the world around them is darting ahead. That slow pace raises questions about higher education’s role and relevance. LinkedIn reports that AI-related jobs are the fastest growing on their platform, yet the skills gap between employers and applicants continues to widen. According to IBM, 40% of the global workforce will need to reskill in the next three years because of AI. How can universities narrow this gap? Universities need to embrace AI as a foundational technology. Yet a recent survey showed that only 14% of university faculty feel confident about incorporating AI into their teaching. Faculty must recognize that AI technology that will permeate every aspect of life. Teach it now, or your students will fall behind. Secondary schools need to do the same: our new AI-infused curriculum requires students to start learning AI in orientation — but the vast majority of students are prohibited from using AI in high school assignments. Just as future workers need to be retrained, so do current university faculty. At Kogod, we brought in private sector AI experts to show how AI can be used in marketing, finance, accounting, and other business school disciplines. In one session, a 26-year-old alumnus on Wall Street taught our finance faculty how to underwrite investments using AI tools — the ultimate Karate Kid moment, where the student became the master. Many universities collaborate with industry on research, particularly in engineering and sciences. But that partnership should extend to improving teaching, with universities starting by listening and learning. Federal government funds should be used to incent universities to modernize and teach AI skills. And as AI becomes even more powerful, core human skills like collaboration, oral communication, and teamwork will become even more critical. Many academics dismiss these skills as not sufficiently rigorous to merit faculty instruction. In a world increasingly shaped by AI, however, strong communication and effective collaboration will define the leaders who can navigate complex human interactions and drive innovation. Therefore, universities should double down on teaching communication, critical thinking, professionalism, and collaboration skills. At the same time, universities must study and teach AI’s shortcomings, from hallucinations to exacerbating social inequality to posing national security risks. The technology creates potential threats, enabling computers to take control of systems, break encryption codes, and rupture cybersecurity defenses. AI makes mistakes and can enhance disinformation. And just as electricity disrupted industries and created new ones, AI will do the same, with the potential to exacerbate divides between the haves and have-nots, expanding social, racial, and class inequities. Academia has a critical role in examining these challenges and preparing students to address them. By adopting a student mindset on AI — listening, learning, and adapting — universities can prepare the next generation for a dramatically different world. The stakes are too high to do anything less. David Marchick serves as the Dean of the Kogod School of Business at American University and is a former senior executive at the Carlyle Group. DON’T MISS CELEBRATING BOLD INNOVATION IN BUSINESS EDUCATION: POETS&QUANTS’ BEST IN CLASS AWARDS FOR 2024