Colleges and universities in the U.S. have faced mounting challenges in recent years. A declining birth rate has led to fewer applicants; rising tuition costs and the ideological takeover of institutions have made Americans increasingly skeptical of higher education; and the growth of online and nontraditional programs—with their ability to credential workers more efficiently—has further eroded confidence in the university as a legitimate path to a secure future. Now, with the added disruption of artificial intelligence, some predict a rapid collapse.
But some are optimistic about higher ed’s future.
Jody Sailor, Senior Director of Academic Strategy and Innovation at Instructure, believes that higher education is not on the brink of collapse but on the verge of reinvention. In a recent interview with Minding the Campus, she acknowledged the mounting pressures on colleges—declining enrollment, rising costs, and shifting student expectations—but framed them as catalysts rather than crises.
On the widely discussed “enrollment cliff,” Sailor pushed back against alarmist narratives. “There hasn’t been the cliff that was projected to come in 2026,” she said, explaining that while some decline is real, “we see it less as a cliff and more of a catalyst, an opportunity to really rethink the way that education is being provided for our students across the board.”
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Sailor pointed to a combination of demographic, economic, and cultural changes transforming the higher education landscape. The shrinking pool of traditional college-age students and growing concerns over debt are reshaping how people approach college. At the same time, younger generations “are really open-minded to think about nontraditional forms of education and where they might want to get their degree or micro-credentials,” she said. Increasingly, students are exploring “diverse modular opportunities that are career-connected.”
This shift, Sailor argued, challenges institutions to evolve. “Their next step may not be to go to a two-year or four-year college or university,” she said. Instead, many are looking to gain targeted skills through partnerships with employers and lifelong learning opportunities—whether through degrees or non-degree credentials.
Sailor believes colleges can rise to this challenge by deepening their connections to the workforce and by measuring learning more meaningfully. “There is an opportunity for our institutions of higher education to really create those partnerships … so that they can really align better with the skill sets that employers are looking for,” she said. “The other thing is really to think about how they are doing authentic assessment to understand what skills these students are achieving and gathering in their toolkit.”
For Sailor, the story of higher education’s future is not one of decline but of adaptation—a chance for institutions to redefine their value by meeting students where they are and preparing them for what comes next.
And what comes next is AI.
AI, Sailor added, is not killing education, but helping it. AI is “providing an opportunity to do more of the personalization, more of the things that I think a lot of educators want to be providing to their students, but have a difficult time doing because of time constraints,” she said. “AI and these different tools are helping to make those connections more broadly and then also be able to personalize to the needs of those learners.”
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One such tool is Instructure’s Canvas. Watch the video below:
Of course, not everyone shares Sailor’s optimism. As the Guardian has noted, critics argue that AI undermines genuine learning by short-circuiting reflection, discouraging students from engaging with original materials, and promoting shortcuts that stunt skill development. They warn that rather than fostering creativity and critical thinking, AI risks eroding both.
A recent survey of 445 higher education faculty and administrators underscores this ambivalence: 93 percent said they expect to expand AI use for work over the next two years, yet 59 percent expressed concerns about data privacy and security, 49 percent worried about bias in AI models, 78 percent feared damage to academic integrity, and 53 percent said they were concerned about AI’s effects on critical thinking.
Sailor acknowledges these anxieties but views them as part of a necessary learning curve for higher education to move through. “Right now, we are at an interesting place where folks are still trying to figure out what are the guardrails and what are the guidelines that we are providing,” she said. Students, she added, are experimenting in ways “that maybe we are not always comfortable with,” but the solution lies in “teaching students the proper ways to use AI and also helping to provide that AI literacy across the board.”
“There are some who consider AI a hindrance to critical thinking,” Sailor continued. “And it could be, if we start using it in ways that we just allow it to do the thinking for us. But that is where I think educators have the expertise and the call to action to really help our students to look at how can I use it to actually further my education.”
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For Sailor, the key is not to fear the technology but to guide its use. “If we are able to think about the proper ways to use AI in our classrooms as well as how to train our students to use them in meaningful and appropriate … ways, then it would actually be the opposite,” she said. “Maybe that is an unpopular opinion, but if we are thinking about what AI can do instead of what it replaces, it allows us that opportunity to really think critically and help our students really to think more critically as well.”
Ultimately, Sailor believes that the future of higher education depends on adaptation, not resistance. “It is not really about surviving these enrollment shifts,” she said. “It is really about reimagining student experience and how institutions will thrive. How can they meet their learners where they are, how do they embrace technology thoughtfully, and how do they stay tightly connected to the world.”
“Our role in education,” she argues, “is to help make the future real and ensure that every student has that pathway to succeed, not just in college, but throughout their career and life.”
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Image of Jody Sailor
I have long compared higher education to the railroads, predicting a similar decline for similar reasons.
But it’s more than just the technology — it’s about 340 miles from Presque Isle, Maine to the New Hampshire border, potatoes are harvested in September and shipped through the winter, and the first 300 miles of that, including 40 miles of 2-lane US Route 1, is not a fun in the winter.
Potatoes were shipped by rail until 1969 when the imploding Penn Central RR forgot to put fuel into the car heaters and the whole shipment froze (and was no good). The farmers who didn’t go bankrupt never shipped by rail again. There was lots of stuff like this and trucks competed on the basis of reliability and better service.
Higher education’s customer service has gone into the toilet over the past 40 years and the clearest indication of this is the decline in the alumni associations. Younger alumni never donated much — they hadn’t had it yet — but they aren’t even joining. It got so bad at UMass that everyone who graduates is automatically made a member of the alumni association.
It’s concurrent with the crackdown on student drinking, but it’s more the initial incarnation of DEI and the end of the concept of “boy meets girl, they fall in love and marry after graduation.” Students have more freedom in high school than in college — I’m not saying this is good, only that it *is* — and “fun” doesn’t happen at college anymore.
The initial approach that a lot of students had in the ’80s & ’90s was that of Parris Island — put up with this for four years so that you can get the good job and *then* have your fun — except the guarantee of a good job with any college degree ended with the 1973 recession.
So pay a lot of money to be treated badly with no expectation of deferred gratification — when two years as an apprentice gives you a six figure income???
And 19 year olds will put up with stuff that older adults simply won’t. So unless higher education can change it’s “sucks to be you” attitude toward students — and I can’t see that happening — it’s going to implode like the railroads did.
NB: I’m not talking in terms of spineless administrators pandering to thuggish mobs — I’m talking about the way they treat individual students.