3 Areas Where AI Will Impact Higher Ed Most in 2025
"In summary, AI will usher in a tipping point of change for students, faculty, and campus efficiencies. The years of ed tech advancements have helped higher ed reach this tipping point."
— Michael Mathews, VP for innovation and technology, Oral Roberts University
"2025 will be the year for AI to be more infused in education initiatives and platforms. AI-powered solutions have reached a tipping point from being a nice-to-have to a must-have in order to deliver compelling and competitive education experiences. When we look at the education sector, the use cases are clear. From creating content like quizzes, to matching students with education courses that meet their needs, to grading huge volumes of work, enhancing coaching and guidance for students, and even collecting, analyzing and acting on feedback from learners, there is so much value to reap from AI. Looking ahead, there could be additional applications in education for multimodal AI models, which are capable of processing and analyzing complex documents including images, tables, charts, and audio."
— Rachael Mohammed, corporate social responsibility digital offerings leader, IBM
"In 2025, my hope is that AI will transform the quality of online learning, particularly in asynchronous courses, by enhancing meaningful interactions and freeing up time for faculty and staff to dedicate more time to directly supporting students. Asynchronous learning often presents unique challenges for students, who may struggle to stay engaged and feel connected. AI can step in to provide real-time feedback on assignments, personalized learning pathways, and automated nudges to keep students on track. These capabilities can ensure that students feel supported and seen, even when learning on their own schedules. By taking on time-consuming tasks like formative assessments, answering routine questions, or monitoring progress, AI will allow faculty and staff to focus on deeper, more personalized connections with students, ensuring that asynchronous courses deliver the kind of support and engagement that leads to meaningful learning outcomes. The future play for AI is to support just-in-time learning opportunities as well as scheduled courses to connect and expand the learning experience to meet the ways students want and need to learn. By complementing human effort, it can empower educators to focus on what matters most — fostering connections and delivering the kind of high-quality learning experiences that truly make a difference in students' lives.
— Dr. Deborah Adair, chief executive officer, Quality Matters
"In 2025, AI will shift from concept to classroom staple and reshape education in a practical way. Faculty will use AI for personalized learning paths tailored to each student's progress, making education feel like a 'choose-your-own-adventure' experience. AI will also create immersive content, like virtual field trips, and streamline tasks like grading and feedback, allowing teachers to focus more on students. By analyzing student performance, AI will help identify learning gaps and suggest targeted support. As AI becomes more user-friendly, educators will be trained to seamlessly incorporate it into daily teaching, making 2025 a breakthrough year for meaningful AI adoption in classrooms."
— Chris Hess, director of AI product management, higher education, Pearson
"Gen AI and AI writing detection tools will evolve, adding advanced capabilities to match each other's detectability flex. End users are reaching higher levels of familiarity and maturity with AI functionality, resulting in a shift in how they are leveraged.
"Savvy users will take a bookend approach, focusing on early-stage ideation, organization, and expansion of original ideas as well as late-stage refinement of ideas and writing. Coupling the use of gen AI with agentic AI applications will help to overcome current limitations, introducing multi-source analysis and adaptation capabilities to the writing process.