Category: Education

The student loan crisis occasionally gets attention in the media, but the coverage is often quick and shallow. Back in 2016 James B. Steele and Lance Williams of Reveal from the The Center for Investigative Reporting presented a more in-depth examination of the student loan industry. As a former student and current professor, I am concerned about student loans.

The original intention of student loans, broadly construed, was to provide lower income students with an affordable means of paying for college. Like most students, I had to take out loans to pay for school. This was back in the 1980s, when college costs were more reasonable and just as student loans were being transformed into a massive for-profit industry. As such, my loans were modest (about $8,000) and I was able to pay them off even on the pitiful salary I was earning as an adjunct professor. Times have, however, changed for the worse. And it just keeps getting worse under Republican rule for the rich, by the rich and against the poor.

Making a long story short, the federal government enabled banks and private equity companies to monetize the federal student loan program, allowing them to profit from the loans and fees. Because many state governments embraced an ideology of selfishness and opposition to the public good, they significantly cut their support for state colleges and universities, thus increasing the cost of tuition. At the same time, university administrations were growing both in terms of number of administrators and the size of salaries, thus increasing costs as well. There was also an increase in infrastructure costs due to new technology as well as a desire to market campuses as having amenities such as rock-climbing gyms. The result was $1.3 trillion in debt for 42 million Americans and this just keeps increasing. On the “positive” side, the government makes about 20% on its 2013 loans and the industry was humming along at $140 billion a year.

While the government held about 93% of the total debt, the debt collection was contracted to private companies and these were scooped up by the likes of JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup. As expected, these contractors make large profits (about $2 billion per year back in 2016). The collection process is often very aggressive, and the industry has used its control over congress to ensure favorable laws. For example, student loan debt is one of the very few debts that are not discharged by bankruptcy.

While student loans were originally intended to benefit students, they now benefit the government and the private contractors to the detriment of students. As such, there is a moral concern here in addition to the practical concerns about loans.

If the primary purpose of student loans is to address economic inequality by assisting lower income students attend college, then its current state goes against this purpose. This is because the system is creates massive debt for students while creating massive profits for the state and private contractors. That is, students are being exploited by both the state and the private sector. The collusion of the state makes seeking redress rather difficult. After all, the people need to turn to the state for redress, yet the state is an interested party and under the influence of industry. This problem is, of course, not unique to student loans and it is one more example of how privatization is great for the private sector rich but often awful for citizens.

It could be argued that the proper function of the state is to serve the interest of the financial elites at the expense of the citizens. If so, then the student loan program should continue as it is; it is great for the state and the financial class while crushing citizens under mountains of debt. If, however, the state should serve the good of the citizens in general, then the status quo is a disaster. My view is, not surprisingly, that of John Locke: the state is to serve the good of the people. As such,  the student loan industry needs to be changed.

One change that would help is for states to return to supporting public higher education. While there are legitimate concerns about budgets, education is a great investment in both the private good of the students and the public good. After all, civilization needs educated people to function and people with college degrees end up with higher incomes and thus pay more taxes (paying back the investment many times over). While there are professed ideological reasons for opposing this, there are also financial motivations: dismantling public education would push more students into the awful for-profit schools that devour money and excrete un(der)employed people burdened by massive debt. While this is great for the owners of these schools, it is awful for the students and society.

Another change, which has been proposed by others, is to change or end the privatized aspects of the system. While there is the myth that the private sector is vastly superior to the inefficient and incompetent state, the fact is that the efficiency of the private sector seems to mostly lie in making a profit for itself rather than running the student loan system in accord with its intended purpose. This is not to say that the state must be great in what it does, just that cutting out the large profits of the collection agencies would reduce the burden on students. This is, of course, a moral question about whether it is right or not to profit on the backs of students.

There has also been talk about reducing the interest rates of student loans and even proposals for free college. I do favor lower interest rates; if the purpose of the loans is to assist students rather than make money, then lower interest rates would be the right thing to do. As far as free college goes, there is the obvious problem that “free” college must be paid for by someone and it is a matter of shifting the burden from students to someone else. The ethics of such a shift depends on who is picking up the tab.

As a closing point, there is also the matter of student responsibility. My loans went entirely to paying education expenses, which is one reason my debt was low even for the time. While many students do use loans wisely, my experiences as a student and a professor have shown that some students use loan money unwisely and put themselves into debt for things that have no connection to education. For example, faculty sometimes joke that while administrators drive the most expensive cars, students drive the second most expensive and most faculty drive the worst. Students that overburden themselves with loans they use irresponsibly have only themselves to blame. However, the fact that a few students do this does not invalidate the claim that much of the debt burden inflicted on students is unjust.  We should, as always, be wary of attempts to demonize people based on anecdotal evidence and straw person attacks.

 

While a concealed weapon permit allows a person to carry a gun in many places, the campuses of public universities have generally been gun-free areas. The Republican rulers of my adopted state of Florida regularly debate whether to allow concealed carry on campus, while other states have already passed such laws.

Before Texas passed such a law, the faculty of the University of Houston met to discuss this issue and express concern about its impact. A slide from a faculty meeting about the law suggests that faculty “be careful in discussing sensitive topics”, “drop certain topics from your curriculum”, “not ‘go there’ if you sense anger”, “limit student access off hours, go to appointment-only office hours , and only meet ‘that student’ in controlled circumstances.”

What was striking about the slide is that the first three suggestions are identical to limits imposed by what detractors call “political correctness” and there are also similarities to recommendations about trigger warnings. This provides the grounds for the discussion to follow in which I consider limits of free speech and academic freedom.

One way to justify limiting academic freedom and free speech is to argue that students are entitled to a non-hostile learning environment in which diversity and difference are not only tolerated but respected. That is, students have a right to expect limits on the academic freedom and free speech of professors. This is often supported by a moral argument that appeals to the harms that would be suffered by the students if the freedoms of the professors were not suitable limited for their protection. For the good of the sensitive students, professors are supposed to accept such restrictions.

This sort of reasoning assumes that students would be harmed without such restrictions and that their right not to be harmed exceeds the imposition on the rights of the professors (and other students who might gain value from such subjects and discussions).

A similar sort of argument can be made in the case of concealed weapons. The reasoning is, presumably, that an armed student might be provoked to violence by what happens in class and thus hurt other students. As such, for the safety of students, restrictions should be accepted.

This reasoning assumes that armed students pose a threat and are easily provoked to violence, a factual matter that will be discussed later. It also assumes that the risk of harm to the students by a fellow student outweighs the rights of free expression and academic freedom (on the part of both professors and students).

Somewhat ironically, the attitude expressed in the slides suggests that there will be a hostile environment for gun owners which is something I have experienced. Being from rural Maine, I learned to shoot as soon as I could hold a gun and spent much of my youth hunting and fishing. While many colleagues do not take issue with this, I have run into some hostility towards guns and hunting over the years. I have had fellow professors say, “you are not stupid, so how can you like guns?” and “you seem like such a decent person, how could you have ever gone hunting” (sometimes said between bites of a burger). While being a gun owner is a matter of owning a gun, there are also cultures that include gun such as the one I grew up in. Hostility towards people because they belong to such a culture seems comparable to hostility towards other aspects of culture, like being hostile towards Muslims or towards men who elect to wear traditional female clothing.

It might be replied that gun culture is not worthy of the same tolerance as other cultures, which is, of course, what people who hate those other cultures say about them. It might also be argued that the intent is not to be intolerant towards people who have guns as part of their culture, but to protect students from the dangers presented by such irrational and violence prone people.

Another way to justify limiting academic freedom and free speech is on practical or pragmatic grounds. In the case of political sensitivity, professors might decide that it is not worth the hassle, the risk of lawsuits, the risk of trouble with administrators and the risk of becoming a news item. As such, the judgment to voluntarily restrict one’s freedom would be an assessment of the practical gains and harms, with the evaluation being that the pragmatic choice is to run a safe class. This, of course, assumes that the practical harm outweighs the practical benefits, an assessment that will certainly vary greatly depending on the circumstances.

The same justification can be used in the case of armed students. The idea is that professors might decide on purely pragmatic grounds that risking provoking an armed student is not worth it. This would not be a moral assessment, simply a pragmatic decision aimed at having a bullet free day in the classroom.  This, of course, assumes that a pragmatic assessment of the risk shows that the best practical choice is to focus on safety.

A final way to justify restricting academic freedom and freedom of expression is a moral argument that is based on potential harm to the professor. In the case of political sensitivity, there is concern about the damage that a professor can suffer if she is not careful to restrict her freedom. While such fear might be unfounded, it is real and certainly provides a moral foundation for self-censoring: the professor must restrict her freedom to avoid doing moral harm to herself. As with any such assessment, the risk of harm and the extent of the harm need to be considered.

In the case of guns, the worry is that a professor could cause herself harm by provoking gun violence on the part of a student. The moral foundation for self-censorship is the same as above: the professor must restrict her freedom to avoid doing moral harm to herself.

As is the case with career damage, a professor would need to consider the risk of provoking a student to gun violence and perhaps the moral choice would be to choose safety over the risk. This leads to the factual matter of the extent of the risk.

The fear expressed by some about concealed carry on campus seems to assume that it presents a significant risk to professors. However, it is not clear that this is the case. First, such laws only allow guns on campus. Threatening or shooting people remain illegal. If someone is willing to break the law regarding threatening or murder, presumably they would also be willing to break a law forbidding guns on campus. As such, there does not seem to be a significant increase in risk because of allowing concealed carry on campus.

 Second, campuses do not (in general) have security checks for guns. It would be one thing if the law disbanded existing security screening to enter campus as this would increase the risk of guns on campus. This law just allows law-abiding citizens to legally bring a gun on campus and has no effect on how easy or hard it is for someone to bring a gun on campus with the intent to commit violence. As such, campuses would be about as safe as ever.

It might be objected that a person will legally bring a gun to class or the professor’s office, be provoked to violence and act on this provocation only because she has a gun (and would not use her hands, a knife or a chair). Thus, the danger is great enough to warrant professors to self-censor.

One reply to this is to note that violence by students against professors is rare and allowing guns on campus would not seem to increase the violent tendencies of students. It could, of course, happen. But a student could also decide to run over a professor with a car and this possibility does not justify banning cars from campus. The fear that a student carrying a weapon legally will murder a professor after being provoked in class or in the office seems analogous to the fear that Muslim refugees will commit terrorists in the United States. While it could happen, the fear is overblown and does not seem to justify imposing restrictions. As such, while free expression combined with legal campus carry does entail a non-zero risk, the risk is so low that self-censorship seems unwarranted.

 

As a philosopher, one of the greatest challenges I face is reducing the number of problems I must deal with in my classes. Addressing this task requires a diverse approach to the problems. In some cases, I must craft policies and rules to attempt to head off troubles. As you might suspect, based on the iron law of bureaucracy (bureaucracy always increases) my syllabus has bloated over the decades. When I first started teaching, my syllabus was about two pages featuring a list of the readings, the grade scale and similar relevant items. But it is now the length of an academic paper, jammed with policies and rules that I am required to include and policies I crafted over the years in response to each new problem. Back when I was in graduate school, a professor joked about naming his rules after the students who made them a necessity and in some cases they did just that. While I do not name my new rules in this manner, each one has a story behind it.

I have found that every semester introduces a new problem that the existing rules and policies do not cover, and thus the syllabus must grow like a monster that feasts on trouble. I do not, of course, think that the policies and rules will ensure that the same problems will not arise again. They will. Rather, they exist so I can paste the policy into emails in response to some problem or issue. Also, since I am a lawfully aligned creature, I do like having a procedure flowchart to follow so I can deal with each problem consistently and fairly in each manifestation.

In other cases, it is a matter of recording yet another video or creating another page in Canvas explaining how some aspects of the course, such as grading, work. While technological advances have required that I add explanations of things that did not exist when I started teaching, the explainers are as likely to be about some ancient aspects of teaching, such as late policies, extra credit policies and such. Based on the five views these have gotten over the years, I know that people are generally not looking at them. As such, while they are intended to inform, they realistically have two practical functions. One is that they make me feel that I have done my job in informing the students so that I feel no guilt or discomfort when students profess not to know something that was thus explained in multiple medias. The second is that they give me something I can link to in emails in response to the questions that were, of course, answered in the syllabus and in class. Mostly, it is just a matter of saving time.

While I do strive to create a class that is free of problems, this is an impossible task. As Plato and other philosophers have argued, this is an imperfect world rife with evils of various sorts. My hypothesis is that baked into the universe is the Ineliminable Problem Problem. The gist of this problem is that no matter what one does, one can never eliminate all problems. I also like to put it this way: For every Problem P that I solve, a Student S will create at least one new Problem X. The IPP applies broadly to all aspects of reality; you can test it yourself.

In the face of real problems, the Republican legislature of my adopted state of Florida has been busy addressing fictional problems and undermining democracy. For example, HB 233, the “Viewpoint Diversity” bill, was signed by Governor DeSantis. When Republicans were asked for examples of problems the bill was intended to address, they could only refer to some parents being worried about things that might happen because the Republicans had been scaring them about things that have not happened. This is obviously the best possible justification for expanding the coercive power of the state.

I am a member of the United Faculty of Florida, a union for faculty. As would be expected, Florida Republicans do not like this union any more than they like most other unions, the police unions being a notable and expected exception. The Republican ideal seems to be that employees should face off against institutions and businesses as isolated individuals, operating from a position of weakness. Engaging with an employer as an individual is like trying to play alone against a full football team: the worker is going to get crushed. I do admit the obvious: unions can have problems. But pointing to things unions have done wrong no more proves that unions are inherently bad than pointing to things employers have done wrong proves that employers are inherently bad.

As would be expected, the UFF sent an email informing us of the law and making recommendations on how to teach in the climate it created. One provision of the law is that students can record lectures without notice and without consent; although there are some limits on how the recordings can be used. As is often the case with Republican laws, this seems to already be allowed by existing laws.

In Florida, it is a crime to record a person without their consent. The exception is for in-person communication when all the parties do not have a reasonable expectation of privacy. An example of this would be holding a conversation in a public space where they could be overheard. A reasonable case can be made that a classroom in a public university is a public space and there is no expectation of privacy when a professor is lecturing. Naturally, there can be cases in the classroom where privacy is expected. For example, if I am speaking to a student after class about their grade and someone is hiding in the hallway recording us, then they would seem to be breaking the law. While I am not a lawyer, I had always operated under the assumption that my lectures could be recorded by students without breaking this wiretapping law: I do not believe that I have an expectation of privacy when I am teaching a class at my public university. That said, a case can be made for such an expectation of privacy.

One could argue that the classroom at a public university is not a public space where there is no expectation of privacy. After all, at class time the classroom is intended for the students enrolled in the class and there is a mechanism for auditing the class. As such, a professor could contend that they have an expectation that the lecture will only be heard by the students enrolled in the class. The class is private for the students and the fact that there are many students does not eliminate the expectation of privacy. I am sympathetic to this view, especially if one considers the students in the class.

Students often, perhaps wrongly, think of the classroom as a private space in terms of being able to express themselves and even to bring up personal matters. For example, a student might want to discuss an incident in which they were the victim of a crime during a course on criminal justice or ethics. As another example, student with atheist parents might want to discuss aspects of their faith in a religion class. If a student is secretly recording the classes, these students will end up in the recordings. As such, one impact of this law might be that students will be even more reluctant to talk in class. In any case, they do have the moral right to know that one of their number might be recording everything in the classroom. I obviously have a moral obligation to inform my students that this is something that can happen.

In my case, the law changed little. I have been recording my classes for years. Students have never asked to not be recorded, but they have always had the moral right to make this request in my classes. But defenders of the law can argue that students should not be worried because the law limits how these secret, non-consensual recordings can be used.

Lectures are presumably protected by copyright laws, and the law seems to respect this somewhat. Such recordings can be used only “for a student’s own personal educational use”, “in connection with a complaint to the public institution of higher education where the recording was made” and “as evidence in, or in preparation for, a criminal or civil proceeding.”

The first use might strike some as very generous; imagine, for example, if a law allowed people to take a camera to a commercial play or movie and record the show for their own personal use later. That said, people are allowed to make recordings in certain contexts for later viewing, so one could take that as the better analogy. 

The second use seems a bit vague and perhaps would allow some abuse, but one could argue that students have a right to record evidence they will use as the basis of a complaint. That said, there is already an existing complaint process and, as noted above, the Republicans have not provided evidence that there is a significant problem that would warrant a new law. But this is to be expected, since the intent of the law seems to be not to protect students but to intimidate professors.

The third use would probably strike most as eminently reasonable: if a professor is doing crimes in the classroom, then they would be hard pressed to make a moral or legal case for a right to do crimes in private. But, as has often been noted, the Republicans have not provided evidence that this is a significant problem or that the matter was not adequately addressed by existing laws.

If a recording is used for other purposes, a faculty member can seek damages of up to $200,000. But, of course, people can already sue anyone for anything, so putting this in the law just limits the damages. Students do, of course, have an easy workaround: they can record a lecture, make a complaint and then the video could end up a matter of public record.

Since I have been recording and distributing my lectures for years, I was and am not worried about the impact of the law on me. However, I was concerned about the intent of the law. One clear motivation was to rile up the base and create the illusion that the Republicans are solving a problem (they made up).  It also allows the Republicans to say they are “owning the libs.” This seems to be much more important to them then engaging in real governance.  The most worrisome motivation is that this law is intended as a Soviet style threat to faculty: “anyone in your class could be a spy, so you had better watch what you say, comrade.”

The right has long been interested in “spying”  on professors and in 2006 a right wing group even offered to pay students to do just that. This tactic of spying goes beyond the classroom and includes attempts to infiltrate political organization. As a counter, one might contend that the media also engages in “spying” operations to gather information about groups. However, there are important differences between an investigation conducted by a professional media organization and partisan “spying.” A key difference is that a professional investigation is aimed at determining the truth of the matter, while partisan “spying” is aimed at a political agenda and hence includes a willingness to distort and mislead. I am, of course, aware of the right-wing view that the liberal media is biased. To the degree that this claim has merit, I would certainly share their concerns.

In closing, my classes include a concise and neutral statement to my students making it clear they have every right to record my class in accord with this law. I also make it clear that they should always keep in mind that someone could be recording them in the class without their knowledge or consent.

Long ago, when I was a student, student loans were mostly manageable. Over the years, the cost of college has increased dramatically, and student loans have become increasingly burdensome. There is also the issue of predatorial for-profit schools. Because of this debt burden, there have been proposals to address the student loan problem. Some have even proposed forgiving or cancelling student loans. This proposal has generated hostile responses, although Roxane Gay has advanced some well-reasoned arguments in its defense. I paid my relatively modest loans long ago, so my concern with is a matter of ethics rather than self-interest. In this essay and those to follow I will consider the ethics of student loan forgiveness and provide some logical assessment of various relevant arguments.

As Gay noted in the New York Times, Damon Linker tweeted that “I think Dems are wildly underestimating the intensity of anger college loan cancellation is going to provoke. Those with college debt will be thrilled, of course. But lots and lots of people who didn’t go to college or who worked to pay off their debts? Gonna be bad.” Linker was right. Even if there was not genuine grassroots anger at student loan forgiveness, Republicans and the right-wing media  generated rage against it. But is there any merit to the anger argument?

Put a bit simply, the anger argument against student loan forgiveness is that because federal student loan forgiveness would make many people angry, then it would be incorrect to do it. This is obviously the appeal to anger fallacy; a fallacy in which anger is substituted for evidence when making an argument. Formally, this version of the fallacy looks like this:

 

Premise 1: X would make people angry.

Conclusion: X is wrong or incorrect.

 

This is bad logic because the fact that something makes people angry has no connection to whether it is true or correct. People can be angry about claims that are true and enraged about things that are good. They can, of course, also be angry about claims that are false and enraged about things that are evil. But the anger people feel does not prove (or disprove) falseness or wrongness. A silly example illustrates this:

 

Premise 1: The triangle haters get angry when it is claimed that triangles have three sides.

Conclusion: Triangles do not have three sides. 

 

Somewhat less silly examples are as follows:

 

Premise 1: Some people got angry about the American colonies rebelling. 

Conclusion: The colonies were wrong to rebel.  

 

Premise 1: Some people are angry about evolution. 

Conclusion: Evolution does not occur.

 

Premise 1: Atheists would be angry if God exists.

Conclusion: God does not exist.

 

As these examples show, drawing a conclusion about the truth of a claim or the morality of something from people being angry is bad reasoning. As such, the anger people might feel about student loan forgiveness is irrelevant to whether it is the right thing to do. But perhaps there is a way to make a non-fallacious argument from anger. One way to do this is to switch from concerns about truth and morality to pragmatism. That is, perhaps it could be argued that the anger of some people would provide a practical reason to not have student loan forgiveness.

While this greatly oversimplifies things, pragmatic arguments are aimed at establishing what would be the most prudent or advantageous thing. This is an argument from consequences. The idea is that the correct choice is the one that generates the best consequences for those who matter. While people tend to think the correct choice is the one they think is best for them, working out an appeal to consequences requires arguing to establish who matters and how to assess the value of the consequences. Laying aside all these concerns, pragmatic arguments from anger can easily be made.

To illustrate, imagine that a politician sees the polls show that most voters are angry about student loan forgiveness and this anger is strong enough to influence their vote. From a pragmatic standpoint, the anger of their voters does give them a practical reason to oppose forgiveness: if they want to increase their chances of being re-elected, then they should oppose it. While this could be for selfish reasons (the politician might want to stay in office to keep cashing in on insider trading) it could also be for benevolent reasons (the politician might want to stay in office to try to improve the lives of their constituents). From a pragmatic standpoint responding to the anger could be the prudent or advantageous thing to do. While these pragmatic reasons can be strong motivating factors, they do not prove (or disprove) anything about the rightness or wrongness of student loan forgiveness. But there is still an option for using anger in a non-fallacious moral argument.

Utilitarianism, a view argued for by the likes of Bentham and Mill, is the moral view that the morality of an action depends on the consequences for those who are morally relevant. Put in simple terms, an action that creates more good for those who count would be better than an action that creates less good (or causes harm). Since utilitarian arguments deal with consequences, it is often possible to re-tool a pragmatic consequentialist argument into a moral argument. Here is how it could be done.

Suppose that there is good reason to believe that Linker is right and anger at any student loan cancellation “gonna be bad.” If the harms generated by this anger outweighs the benefit of the loan cancellation when considering all Americans, then the loan cancellation would be wrong. Thus, it would seem that the right sort of appeal to anger can work. But there is an obvious concern about the role of the anger in generating the harms.

If cancelling the loans itself resulted in greater harms than not doing so (such as pulling money from critical social programs), then it would seem right to not cancel them. But the anger argument rests on how people respond to the cancellation, not the harm done by the cancelling itself. That is, the harms in question would arise because of what people do because they are angry in response to the cancellation. This leads to an old ethical debate about how to factor in responses when doing the utilitarian calculation. On the one hand, it does seem reasonable to consider how people will respond when sorting out consequences. On the other hand, there is the obvious problem that people could force a change in the moral calculation by responding in ways that would create harms. That is, they could “rig” the moral argument by threatening to respond with terrible actions.

To use a fictional example, imagine a debate over raising minimum wage in which businesses said they would kill their minimum wage employees, their pets, and their loved ones if the wage was increased. In terms of consequences, this would make increasing the minimum wage extremely harmful and so it would be wrong to increase it. As an alternative fictional example, imagine the much-feared radical leftists threatened to kill business owners, their pets, and their loved ones if the minimum wage is not increased. This would make not increasing it wrong. But there is clearly a problem with assessing the morality of an action based on what the worst people might do in response to that action since this would make morality hostage to the worst people. One fix is to consider the action apart from such efforts to prevent the action by intentionally increasing the harms while also, obviously enough, assessing the ethics of these efforts. So, when considering student loan cancellation there is the moral issue of the consequences of the cancellation itself and there is the distinct moral issue of whether the responses to it would be morally appropriate or not. That is, we need to see if the anger against loan cancellation is morally warranted. If it is not, then the anger might have negative consequences but yielding to that anger would be wrong. In the next essay I will consider the fairness argument, free of anger.

 

As I type this Microsoft’s Copilot AI awaits, demon-like, for a summons to replace my words with its own. The temptation is great, but I resist. For now. But AI is persistently pervasive, and educators fear both its threat and promise. This essay provides a concise overview of three threats: AI cheating, Artificial Incompetence, and Artificial Irrelevance.

When AI became available, a tsunami of cheating was predicted. Like many, I braced for flood but faced a trickle. While this is anecdotal evidence, the plagiarism rate in my classes has been a steady 10% since 1993. As anecdotal evidence is not strong evidence, it is fortunate that Stanford scholars Victor Lee and Denise Pope have been studying cheating. They found that in 15 years of surveys, 60-70% of students admitted to cheating. While that is not good, in 2023 the percentage stayed about the same or decreased slightly, even when students were asked about cheating with AI. This makes sense as cheating has always been easy and the decision to cheat is based more on ethics than technology. It is also worth considering that AI is not great for cheating. As researchers Arvind Narayanan and Sayash Kapoor have argued, AI is most useful at doing useless things. Having “useless” work that AI can do well could be seen as a flaw in course design rather than a problem with AI. There are also excellent practices and tools that can be employed to discourage and limit cheating. As such, AI cheating is unlikely to be the doom of the academy. That said, a significant improvement in quality of AI could change this. But there is also the worry that AI will lead to Artificial Incompetence, which is the second threat.

Socrates was critical of writing and argued it would weaken memory. Centuries later, television was supposed to “rot brains” and it was feared calculators would destroy mathematical skills. More recently, computers and smartphones were supposed to damage the minds of students. AI is latest threat.

There are two worries about AI in this context. The first ties back to cheating: students will graduate into jobs but be incompetent because they cheated with AI. While having incompetent people in important jobs is worrying, this is not a new problem. There has always been the risk of students cheating their way to incompetence or getting into professions and positions because of nepotism, cronyism, bribery, family influence, etc. rather than competence. As such, AI is not a special threat here.

A second worry takes us back to Socrates and calculators: students using technology “honestly” could become incompetent. That is, lack the skills and knowledge they need. But how afraid should we be?

If we look back at writing, calculators, and computers we can infer that if the academy was able to adapt to these technologies, then it will be able to adapt to AI. But we will need to take the threat seriously when creating policies, lessons and assessments. After all, these dire predictions did not come true because people took steps to ensure they did not. But perhaps this analogy is false, and AI is a special threat.

A reasonable worry is that AI might be fundamentally different from earlier technologies. For example, it was worried that Photoshop would eliminate the need for artistic skill, but it turned out to be a new tool. But AI image generation is radically different, and a student could use it to generate images without having or learning any artistic skill. This leads to the third threat, that of Artificial Obsolescence.

As AI improves, it is likely that students will no longer need certain skills because AI will be able to do it for them (or in their place). As this happens, we will need to decide whether this is something we should fear or just another example of needing to adapt because technology once again rendered some skills obsolete

To illustrate, modern college graduates do not know how to work a spinning wheel, use computer punch cards or troubleshoot an AppleTalk network. But they do not need such skills and are not incompetent for lacking them. But there is still the question of whether to allow skills and knowledge to die and what we might lose in doing so.

While people learn obsolete skills for various reasons, such as hobbies, colleges will probably stop teaching some skills made “irrelevant” by AI. But there will still be relevant skills. Because of this, schools will need to adjust their courses and curriculum. There is also the worry that AI might eliminate entire professions which could lead to the elimination of degrees or entire departments. But while AI is new, such challenges are not.

Adapting to survive is nothing new in higher education and colleges do so whether the changes are caused by technology, economics, or politics. As examples, universities no longer teach obsolete programming languages and state universities in Florida have been compelled by the state to change General Education. But AI, some would argue, will change not just the academy but will reshape the entire economy.

In some dystopian sci-fi, AI pushes most people into poverty while the AI owning elites live in luxury. In this scenario, some elite colleges might persist while the other schools perish. While this scenario is unlikely, history shows economies can be ruined and dystopia cannot be simply dismissed. But the future is what we make, and the academy has a role to play, if we have the will to do so.

In Utopian sci-fi, AI eliminates jobs we do not want to do while freeing us from poverty, hardship, and drudgery. In such a world of abundance, colleges might thrive as people have the time and opportunity to learn without the pressure of economic necessity. Or perhaps colleges would be largely replaced by personal AI professors.

In closing, the most plausible scenario is that AI has been overhyped and while colleges will need to adapt to the technology, they will not be significantly harmed, let alone destroyed. But it is wise to be prepared for what the future might bring because complacency and willful blindness always prove disastrous

As professors we worry students will use AI to cheat (until it takes our jobs). But we can also transform AI into a useful and engaging teaching assistant by creating AI personas tailored to our classes.

An AI persona defines the distinctive character and tone of an artificial intelligence, such as ChatGPT. It is like an NPC (non-player character) in a video game. Both are designed to interact in a way that feels natural and engaging, enhancing the overall experience.

Creating a custom AI persona for a class involves two general tasks. While a robust Large Language Model (LLM) like CoPilot or ChatGPT will have a vast database, it will probably lack content specific to your class. So, the first task is to provide that information. The second task is to design a suitable persona. But why bother?

There are several advantages to having an AI TA. Unlike a human, it is available all hours and provides immediate responses. Human professors have other tasks, their own lives outside of academics and, of course, need to sleep.

Students are often reluctant to ask questions in class or during office hours, perhaps because of fear of embarrassment or being judged. As the philosopher Thomas Hobbes noted, people often do not take criticism well from other people, for “to dissent is like calling him a fool.”  But a student can interact privately with an AI TA without fear of embarrassment or judgement.  And some people are more comfortable with (and addicted to) interacting with devices rather than other people, so an AI TA has an advantage here as well.

And, as Kyle Reese said of the Terminator, “It doesn’t feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead.” While we do not want our AI TAs to terminate students, it will never get tired, angry, inattentive, distracted or bored. This provides an advantage over humans, especially when a student is struggling with material or prefers to learn at a different pace from that offered in the classroom. As these advantages arise from the AI aspect of the AI TA, you might wonder why you should create a persona.

One reason is that creating a persona allows you to set guardrails, so the AI TA does not, for example, do the work for the students. Another reason is that, going back to the NPC comparison, an AI with a persona is more interesting and can make conversations feel more natural and relatable, thus keeping students engaged longer. A persona can also be designed to add humor, creativity, or unique quirks, making interactions more enjoyable. While this can be controversial and raises some moral concerns, a persona can convey empathy and understanding, creating a sense of trust and comfort.

One practical concern about customizing the persona is analogous to picking the paint used for classrooms. While most find the usual neutral colors dull, they also do not find them annoying. While creative use of color in the classroom might appeal to some, it might also be annoying and distracting to others. And we must never forget the lesson of Microsoft’s Clippy. As such, care should be taken in making an appealing but not annoying AI TA.

A persona can also be designed to fit the needs of your class and students, thus creating a customized experience. A well-designed person can also simplify complex interactions, guiding the students through, for example, how to structure their paper or a complex problem. If the idea of having an AI TA is appealing, it is surprisingly easy to make this happen.

There are many ways to enable your AI TA. The cheapest and easiest is to provide your students with a prompt to create a persona and a file to upload to, for example, CoPilot. The downside is that the persona will be simple and both it and the file will be forgotten as soon as the session ends, requiring students to take these steps each time. The student will also have control over the persona prompt, so they can easily remove any guardrails you included.

A more expensive option is to get a subscription, such as that offered by ChatGPT, that allows you to create a persistent persona with custom content. This is easier for the students and allows you to ensure that your AI TA will operate within your specified guardrails (mostly).

There is also the option of hosting your own customized local LLM. While you will need suitable hardware, this is much easier than it sounds. For example, with the free software Ollama you could be running your own LLM within minutes. Customizing it and creating a web interface for students is much more challenging, but there is also free software available for this. No matter what approach you take, you will want to ensure that your AI TA operates and is used safely and ethically. Here are some recommendations.

While the AI TA should help students, it should avoid providing complete answers to exam questions, essays, or assignments. Instead, it should focus on guiding students through problem-solving techniques and frameworks. It can also be designed to ask thought-provoking questions and encourage exploration of topics to deepen understanding.

On the moral side, you need to communicate the AI TA’s limitations and your ethical guidelines for its usage. Encourage students to use the AI TA as a tool for learning rather than for shortcuts.

If the AI TA detects repeated behavior suggesting attempts to cheat (e.g., asking for answers to specific assignments), it could notify the user of the ethical standards. While you might worry that this would annoy students, Aristotle notes in his Nicomachean Ethics that “although people resent it when their impulses are opposed by human agents, even if they are in the right, the law causes no irritation by enjoining decent behavior.” While Aristotle’s claim can be disputed, the same should apply to the AI TA.

My name is Dr. Michael LaBossiere, and I am reaching out to you on behalf of the CyberPolicy Institute at Florida A&M University (FAMU). Our team of professors, who are fellows with the Institute, have developed a short survey aimed at gathering insights from professionals like yourself in the IT and healthcare sectors regarding healthcare cybersecurity.

The purpose of The Florida A&M University Cyber Policy Institute (Cyπ) is to conduct interdisciplinary research that documents technology’s impact on society and provides leaders with reliable information to make sound policy decisions. Cyπ will help produce faculty and students who will be future experts in many areas of cyber policy. https://www.famu.edu/academics/cypi/index.php

Your expertise and experience are invaluable to us, and we believe that your participation will significantly contribute to our research paper. The survey is designed to be brief and should take no more than ten minutes to complete. Your responses will help us better understand the current security landscape and challenges faced by professionals in your field, ultimately guiding our efforts to develop effective policies and solutions for our paper. We would be happy to share our results with you.

To participate in the survey, please click on the following link: https://qualtricsxmfgpkrztvv.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_8J8gn6SAmkwRO5w

We greatly appreciate your time and input. Should you have any questions or require further information, please do not hesitate to contact us at michael.labossiere@famu.edu

Thank you for your consideration and support.

Best regards,

Dr. Yohn Jairo Parra Bautista, yohn.parrabautista@famu.edu

Dr. Michael C. LaBossiere, michael.labossiere@famu.edu

Dr. Carlos Theran, carlos.theran@famu.edu

While there are arguments in favor of school choice that transfers public money to private schools, many of them focus on the benefits to those able to leave public schools. Those left behind seem largely ignored. This is a problem.

An argument in favor of school choice is based on the claim that it allows students to escape from dangerous public schools. It is true that public schools can be violent places and protecting children from violence is laudable. This approach is analogous to moving away from high-crime areas, ideally to well-policed gated communities. While this is beneficial to those who can choose to escape, it does nothing to address the underlying problems of school violence. It merely allows some to escape, while leaving the rest behind.

It could be argued that school choice can still solve the problem. However, the obvious reply is that even if all children are (for example) given vouchers, this will merely recreate the problematic public schools but in private form. This undercuts the safety argument for school choice. It would be like trying to solve the problem of high crime neighborhoods by creating gated communities and then moving everyone within the gates. This shows the basic problem with trying to create safety by moving some people away from unsafe areas: it does nothing for those left behind.

One could counter that the solution is dilution: if the problem children could be identified and distributed among various schools, they would be more manageable. This does have some merit, but this could obviously be done without school choice programs.

It could be argued that what matters is securing the safety of some, be it in private schools funded by public money or in gated communities. As such, school choice is good for those who matter. Those left behind do not matter. While this might be appealing to those on the right side of the gates, the obvious problem is that they do not (yet) exist in total isolation from those left behind. So, failing to address the underlying safety issues still leaves people unsafe. This argument is like arguing that public roads are unsafe because of poor maintenance, so the solution is to provide some drivers with publicly funded road vouchers so they can drive on the safer private roads. While this can be great for those who get the vouchers, it does nothing for those stuck with the dangerous public roads. It would make more sense to use the public money to make the public roads safer.

A second stock argument, the quality argument, in favor of school choice is that private schools perform better than public schools, so parents who want their children to get a good education should favor programs that permit their children to avoid or leave public schools in favor of private schools. This assumes that, in general, public schools will be inferior schools. Let us suppose that is true and the higher quality of private schools is a reason to provide public funds to allow some parents to remove their children from the inferior public schools.

From the perspective of those leaving, this seems like a good argument. Who would not want to be able to choose a better education for their children? However, what happens to those left behind, such as those who do not get vouchers? They, obviously enough, remain in what are claimed to be inferior schools. What about them?

It could be claimed that the choice programs can be expanded to allow more children to escape the bad public schools. But diverting more money to school choice programs will result in less funding for public schools, thus resulting in a spiraling decline for these schools.

It could also be argued that the choice program can be funded without taking money from public schools, so public schools would also be well-funded. However, this creates a problem for the quality argument. If public schools are bad, then it would make more sense to use public money to make them better rather than diverting funds to private schools. If public schools are properly funded and become good schools, then the quality argument would be undercut. Using public money so children can “flee” a good school to attend another good school has little appeal. So, the quality argument is self-defeating.

While school choice is appealing to those who want their children to escape public schools, it does nothing to address those left behind. This is a serious failing of school choice and makes one suspect that its proponents do not really care about the good for all children, just what is good for certain people.

 

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In the previous essay, I considered some arguments in favor of school vouchers. Another set of arguments focus on the choice aspect, that vouchers allow parents to select the education that best fits their children and that will cultivate the desired values. For example, choice proponents claim that vouchers enable parents of children with special needs to pick a tailored program not available in public schools. An obvious reply to these arguments is that the main reason public schools lack tailored programs is that they are underfunded. Schools could offer tailored programs if they had the funding and diverting public money to vouchers makes less sense than funding these programs. This would be like arguing that public money should be diverted from community rec centers to private gyms because the rec centers lack the variety of equipment possessed by private gyms. If the equipment is critical for the community, then the funding should be used to get that equipment for the rec centers rather than funneling money into private gyms.

A third set of arguments focus on economic efficiency and accountability. The gist of the arguments is that private schools will be more economically efficient and more accountable than public schools. While I will not deny that public schools can be inefficient and lack accountability, the same is true of private schools. Look at the nightmare of for-profit colleges to see what can go wrong in the private education sector. There is no public sector curse and private sector magic, one can have bad or good in either. If a school district is inefficient and not accountable, going private is not an automatic fix. It just leaves all the problems in place in what remains of the public sector. Rather, the solution is to increase efficiency and accountability in the public sector, as has been done with many very good public schools. In the case of for-profit schools, there is always the obvious question about how they can do all that a public school would do for less yet still make a profit. At the college level, the answer was that they did not.

A final set of arguments focus on how vouchers and similar programs improve schools by offering competition. While, as a runner and gamer, I do recognize that competition can result in improvements, this does not seem to apply in education. First, consider the disastrous for-profit colleges. If the competition hypothesis held true, they should have been better than public schools and helped improve them. However, they ended up being vacuums for public money and disasters for their students. Public schools mainly responded by doing what they could to help their victims. After the for-profit college debacle I attended meetings about what we could do to help the “refugees” from the failed for-profit colleges. Second, public schools operate at an incredible disadvantage in the competition. They are more accountable than private schools, they must meet far more requirements than private schools, they are subject to state assessment and grading, they must accept everyone, and their funding is limited. Arguing this way for vouches is like arguing that giving places like Disney and Six Flags public money from the state park system would improve the state parks because of the competition. This would not improve the state parks—they are far more limited than the private operations and already have far less funding. If we want better state parks, taking away money is not the way to make that happen. Likewise, taking money from public education is not going to make it better.

In sum, while vouchers are good for some people, they do not benefit public education. The arguments in their favor are problematic, while those against them are strong. As such, vouchers (and similar programs) are a bad idea.

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