Institutional Purpose and AI: Implications for Post-Graduation Success

Most of the conversations in higher education about Generative Artificial Intelligence (G-AI) focus on pedagogical applications and its ethical use in instruction. This exploratory effort takes a different framing. This research is based on the premise that pedagogical G-AI is not only a tool for learning or an object of the classroom, but an artifact of institutional purpose. The ways it is used reflect underlying assumptions that in turn impact institutional outcomes.

This study seeks to explore how G-AI is used at institutions engaged in elite and in opportunity education. We want to understand some of the ways in which these institutions are constructing the purposes and uses of G-AI in their respective context and the possible implications of those behaviors for institutions with different resources, students and missions. To that end this study will investigate the following questions:

• How are universities of different institutional type advancing G-AI use in undergraduate education?
• What are their understandings of institutional expectations regarding its use and how do these shape their approach?
• To what extent do the uses vary between a medallion and an opportunity or convenience university?
• What are the implications for social equity given institutional purpose based on market segmentation? Do medallion universities adopt an effectiveness assumption and opportunity universities adopt an efficiency assumption?

Press release 

International Research Consortium Launches Global AI in Higher Education Collaboration