3 new rules for AI in education, revealed in global conversation with HE leadership.

Takeout: When AI can now 'do the work', conversations with 32 higher education leaders point to the standards emerging to assure graduate capability: Zero Cognitive Offload; Evidence before Suspicion; Educator in Command.

32 leaders | 10 countries & territories

Now in its fifth year, our Reimagining Higher Education podcast series has featured candid, peer-to-peer discussions between university leaders.

These interviews explore leadership journeys, critical institutional challenges, and the evolving and complex landscape of teaching and learning.

In this mid-year synthesis, five themes are clear:

3x diagnoses (The assessment reckoning; From policing to trust; Protect the thinking) 1x mandate (Learning and equity are the point, not technology adoption) 1x view of the stakes (Belonging and public licence.)

From these themes emerged three decision-making principles — where each is an answer to a diagnosis, responds to the mandate, and is in pursuit of the stakes raised by the HE educators and leaders.

The test: the technology ensures the student, not the machine, does the thinking the credential certifies. Any use of AI that substitutes for, rather than scaffolds, the student's own reasoning fails this standard. For example, a general-purpose LLM is a productivity layer by design and produces no evidence of learning, nor holds an audit trail, nor scaffolds the teacher-learner relationship.

e.g. “…to make sure that students actually can demonstrate what they're learning, even with the use of AI. So that the use of AI doesn't completely replace their thinking.”

Dr Courtney Hills McBeth · Provost & CAO, Western Governors University

The test: the assessment process contains positive, regulator-ready signs of student's own learning, led by both student and educator agency. Owned evidence of learning that can be assured - not simply suspicion of cheating - is the agreement here.

e.g. “…far more authentic assessments that we can assure in a far more rigorous way…”

Prof Clare Pollock · Vice-Chancellor, Edith Cowan University

The test: the educator sets the assessment standard, and is enabled to stay in relationship with the learner — as opposed to with the document or constantly with the technology. Check that the technology reduces workload, but is in service to the teaching & learning relationship, not replacing it.

e.g. “AI should free us up to be more human in service to our students.”

Dr Russell Lowery-Hart · Chancellor, Austin Community College District

Breakout: Where do these standards apply?

AI technology is already adopted, that's made clear by leaders around the world in these interviews. But that question, ' should we adopt?' is old. The more relevant question now, that councils, regulators and communities are asking, is 'how do we know the learning is real?'

That's where these standards are applied:

☐ Zero Cognitive Offload

☐ Evidence before Suspicion

☐ Educator in Command

These are both decision-making inputs, as well as ongoing assurances to communities and regulators.

THEME 01: A DIAGNOSIS

The most recurrent theme of the series was a kind of diagnosis, that AI has severed the link between what a student submits and what a student knows. Leaders seem to describe three groups of solutions: structural redesign of curriculum, verification through live or other personal demonstration, and making the learning process itself the evidence.

THEME 02: A DIAGNOSIS

No leader in this series defended surveillance-and-detection as a strategy; several (from four different regions entirely) attacked it directly.

What replaces it - recurring in conversation after conversation - is capability-building, clear guidelines, and assessment that invites students to demonstrate rather than defend themselves.

THEME 03: A DIAGNOSIS

The first cohort to complete degrees with unconstrained AI access has graduated. What must be protected, leaders argue, is the student's own thinking — and what fills the space that simple "knowledge transmission" once occupied is human: judgement, empathy, curiosity, even the ability to read the room.

THEME 04: A MANDATE

No leaders argued for prohibition of AI; many mocked the idea of resistance.

But it was also clear that adoption arrives with standards around cognitive offload, the capability behind degrees, and a warning: the technology will produce winners and losers among institutions and students if: cognitive offload is ignored, if equity isn't considered, and if AI literacy comes before real literacy.

— the same leader adding, in the same conversation, that within every course there is a “certain foundation that you have to make sure that students absorb without AI.” The AI skills of the field come after that foundation, not instead of it.

THEME 05: THE STAKES

Where AI came up in conversation, there was an often difficult commercial and political discussion: higher education's social licence. Completion, cost, and public confidence were recurring conversations in every region. Leaders described a way forward that looks like: belonging, personal connection, and employability designed into the degree.

Across all conversations:

• Detection-and-punishment corrodes trust. There was no defence of the surveillance model in these conversations.
• The human capabilities are the graduate attributes that survive. Critical thinking, judgement, empathy, resilience — delivered through relational, belonging-centred scaffolding.

• Disruption versus continuity. This was not whether to adapt but how deep the disruption runs, or: adaptation vs. total upheaval. Mode of delivery and community. Differences were seen inside the United States, in particular. However, the disagreement was really about mission and the population served — that is, working adults, dispersed and equity cohorts versus residential school-leavers — rather than about pedagogy itself.
• Who drives the change? A regional pattern emerges: "decisive" top-down speed in the GCC and Southeast Asia; "distributed governance" described as the constraint in Australia and North America.
• Optimism. While there was pessimism, or caution - there was also confidence that current pressure may force better teaching and learning experiences, grounded in the conviction that “higher education is the future” of societies.

This synthesis covers the most recent 32 episodes of Studiosity's Reimagining Higher Education podcast recorded between July 2025 and July 2026, hosted by anchor Professor Judyth Sachs (Chief Academic Officer, Studiosity), and with hosts Dr Ashraf Mahate, and Professor Noreen Golfman.

Prof Lily Kong

President, Singapore Management University

Prof Adeeba Kamarulzaman

Pro Vice-Chancellor & CEO, Monash University Malaysia

Prof Dato' Elizabeth Lee

Group CEO, Sunway Education Group, Malaysia

Prof Abtar Kaur

Professor of Innovative Digital Technology, Asia Pacific University of Technology & Innovation, Malaysia

Dr Joane Serrano

Chancellor, University of the Philippines Open University

Prof Zlatko Skrbis

Vice-Chancellor & President, Australian Catholic University

Prof Alex Zelinsky

President & Vice-Chancellor, University of Newcastle

Prof Clare Pollock

Vice-Chancellor, Edith Cowan University

Prof Nick Klomp

Vice-Chancellor & President, CQUniversity

Prof Michael Donovan

Pro Vice-Chancellor Indigenous, La Trobe University

Dr Sudhindra Shamanna

Academic President, Manipal Academy of Higher Education, Dubai

Prof Grant Edwards

Vice-Chancellor, Lincoln University, New Zealand

Dr Stacy Young

President, Manchester University, Indiana

Dr Russell Lowery-Hart

Chancellor, Austin Community College District

Dr Courtney Hills McBeth

Provost & Chief Academic Officer, Western Governors University

Dr David Andrews

Chancellor, UMass Global and Studiosity Academic Advisory Board.

Dr Kemi Jona

Vice Provost for Online Education and Digital Innovation, University of Virginia; and Studiosity Academic Advisory Board.

Dr Yolanda Watson Spiva

President, Complete College America, and Studiosity Academic Advisory Board.

Dr Alison Morrison-Shetlar

President, University of Lynchburg

Dr James Beeby

Chancellor, University of Wisconsin–La Crosse

Dr Ronald Rochon

President, California State University, Fullerton

Ted Mitchell

President, American Council on Education

Prof Noreen Golfman

Former Provost & VP Academic, Memorial University of Newfoundland; and Studiosity Academic Advisory Board.

Goldie Blumenstyk

Studiosity Strategic Adviser; 36 years reporting at The Chronicle of Higher Education

Jack Goodman

Founder, Studiosity

Dr Abdulsalam Khayyat

Vice President for Academic Affairs, An-Najah National University, Palestine

Dr Wafa Al Mansoori

Interim President & Provost, American University of Bahrain

Prof Yousef Haik

Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs, University of Sharjah

Prof Bassam Alameddine

President, American University of Ras Al Khaimah

Prof Imad Hoballah

Senior academic leader, American University of Ras Al Khaimah; former Lebanese minister of industry

Prof Nathalie Martial-Braz

Vice-Chancellor, Sorbonne University Abu Dhabi

Prof Khalid Khawaja

Provost & Vice President for Academic Affairs, RIT Dubai

Citation: Studiosity Academic Advisory Board (2026). Reimagining Higher Education: Leadership Trends, July 2025 – July 2026. Bi-annual synthesis of conversations with university leaders.

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