AI as a Catalyst for the change of higher education in China

About the authors: 

Nan Zhang: deputy director of graduate administration at the School of Applied Economics, Renmin University of China

Zidong An: associate professor at the School of Applied Economics, Renmin University of China

Chu Wei:  professor and vice dean at the School of Applied Economics, Renmin University of China

Powered by AI, driverless cars are hitting the road, and robots can work in factories, find parking spaces, and advise oncologists. In the past, automation posed a threat to low-skilled labor. Now, many high-skilled functions, including writing papers, interpreting medical images, analyzing data, and doing legal research, are within the skill sets of AI machines.

Now, one in every five college students is in China, and over 44.3 million students are studying at higher education institutions across the country in 2021. As the world's largest higher education system, how can China prepare students for their professional lives when professions themselves are disappearing? The Chinese government always has prioritized education in its socioeconomic development blueprint and attaches great importance to the transformative changes brought by AI. In April 2018, the Ministry of Education of China issued "AI Innovation Action Plan for Colleges and Universities," setting up a number of objectives by 2030 (such as textbooks, courses, and research centers) targeting to train China's cadre of AI talent and improve the digital proficiency and skills of teachers and students. In March 2022, the ministry launched the world's largest digital education database--the Smart Education of China platform. It covers more than 44,000 courses for primary and secondary schools and 27,000 Massive Open Online Courses for higher education and is used by people in more than 200 countries and regions.

Realizing the emergency and significance of integrating AI and education, it's urgent to examine the characteristics of China's higher education, design an incentive-compatible transformative path, and accelerate the application and adaption to the change brought by AI. First of all, China's education is featured with knowledge-accumulation-oriented. More knowledge is believed to be associated with greater problem-solving capacity. However, this education process is accompanied by massive human input, long duration, and unprecedented hard work. For example, it usually takes students more than 15 years to accomplish the process for a bachelor's degree and longer for a doctoral degree. Secondly, China's education system tends to encourage the acceptance of the existing cultivation of specific skills or professions, while it is relatively absent in imagination and creativity. This pattern may have the advantage of training application-driven scientists and engineers but may lag in ground-breaking innovative theory and original thought. Thirdly, China's higher education system is endowed with research functions, usually carried out in traditional ways, such as large labor and equipment-intensive activities and repetitive routine scientific experiments.

However, the fact remains that machines will keep getting better at performing skilled work. ChatGPT, a recently launched OpenAI chatbot capable of writing emails, poems, and even academic papers and computer code, has passed several tests in seconds and has been hailed as a potentially disruptive innovation for many different reasons in industries, especially the higher education field. We can predict that many jobs today's students will occupy in the next 20-30 years do not exist today. For students, a core competence will lie in distinguishing themselves from machines and transforming into lifelong learning that enables them to upskill and retrain continuously as they try to stay competitive against the job-eating robots. For universities, they need to repurpose themselves to serve students throughout their working lives and transform into a new education model that is different in delivery method, content, and context. Given the trend and our traits, what changes should we make to integrate AI with our higher education better?

The first change is to move toward education that strengthens the cultivation of creativity and transfer ability, areas where humans always excel. AI algorithms are very efficient at retrieving patterns and making predictions based on data. But humans still have the edge when it comes to abstract thinking, common sense, and transfer learning. Meanwhile, humans can quickly apply abstract concepts learned from one field to another, while for AI, every new task is a fresh new challenge that must be learned from scratch. This is why humans only need a few hours to learn a new computer game, while it takes a machine-bearing deep learning algorithm thousands of hours worth of playtime to reach the novice level. Efforts in AI transfer learning have so far been limited to very narrow tasks, such as tuning a trained image classifier on a new set of images. "Experiential learning," which replaces the passive absorption of information with the integration of knowledge and real-world experience, enables students to practice the ability of transfer. For humans, applying abstract concepts from one domain to another will be key to constantly learning new skills as AI transforms the world around us.

Second, we should shift to a model that emphasizes enhancing the student learning experience and increasing the efficiency of faculty with the help of AI-powered systems. A student's learning experience is formed and impacted by their interaction with course content. AI is altering traditional instruction models featuring one-size-fits-all, resulting in greater academic success by creating a personalized learning experience. AI platforms armed with cognitive engagement and insight technology can ensure student success in keeping them on track to meet their requirements by holding them accountable when their instructor lacks the time for individual student attention while informing students and instructors of the topics they are strongest and weakest in. When assessing students, AI can take over time-consuming tasks like test proctoring and grading that, take the focus away from developing the best curriculum for students. Predictive grading analytics can be implemented to help instructors identify where students need the most support to graduate or pass a class.

Last but most urgent, we call for a bigger role in ethical education and surveillance measures in the era of AI. Dealing with ethics and transparency in data collection, use, and dissemination: AI incurs many ethical concerns regarding the education system, recommendations to individual students, personal data concentration, liability, impact on privacy, and ownership of data-feeding algorithms. The dark side of science and technology is a reflection of human nature, which can be influenced through the guidance of ethical education in higher education. Progress is always human-driven; whether AI is a bane or boon depends on what we decide. It is necessary for colleges and universities to shape the value, guiding and cultivating nature for the good because they are so closely related to society. As to surveillance and regulation, for instance, how to battle against AI-based plagiarism or so-called "AIgiarism"? The San Francisco-based developers OpenAI that has launched ChatGPT shed some light on such issues. The company is developing a system to identify those who cheat by submitting essays written by ChatGPT. Using watermarks that statistically adjust certain works into a recognizable pattern, the machine-generated text could be detected by looking for the signs. Moreover, to combat cheating online, cognitive engagement technology in the form of digital proctors can be used to monitor the behavior of students taking exams outside the classroom. We should synergize multidisciplinary forces to strengthen research on laws, ethics, and social issues related to AI for the optimization of laws, regulations, and ethical norms accordingly to ensure its healthy development.

Seen as a catalyst for the transformation of higher education in China, AI is expected to trigger waves of changes while there is still a long way to go. The one thing that never changes is change itself. Collective efforts from not only the higher education system but also society's parties are needed to work together to push forward the development of AI-powered higher education to usher in a new golden era.