Bill Gates cites two revolutionary moments in the history of technology during his lifetime. One was  when he saw a graphical user interface for the first time. The second was when he watched GPT, the artificial intelligence model, get the highest score possible on the AP Bio exam.

Let that sink in.

Gates, a pivotal player and eyewitness to the colossal economic and societal shifts brought on by the personal computing industry and rise of the internet, thinks AI is as significant.

He even describes it as a before and after milestone.

“The pre-AI period,” he says, “will seem as distant as the days when using a computer meant typing at a C:> prompt rather than tapping on a screen.”

Hard truth: higher education can’t treat AI like it did the internet.

The internet was born out of academic research. Yet higher ed crawled as other sectors raced towards the digital era. By 2020, for example, there was still no online version of the SAT. It took the COVID pandemic to force organizations like the CollegeBoard to make their services available on the internet.

The pandemic exposed giant gaps in higher ed’s slow adoption of digital everything.

Faculty struggled to adapt their curricula for remote learners. They lacked the infrastructure (Zoom wasn’t in most people’s vocabulary yet) and training to effectively teach online.

Administrative staff couldn’t log in to critical student information systems from their makeshift home offices. And students couldn’t submit the many paper forms that schools hadn’t transitioned to digital formats.

Like the internet, AI is being adopted much more quickly outside of higher ed. And if the incredible growth of tools like ChatGPT and AI chip manufacture Nvidia are indicators, AI will move even faster than the internet did.

This means that higher education institutions need to be strategic and accelerate their adoption of AI or risk being left behind. And in turn, leave their students unprepared for a new world and workforce.

Leading with intention.

Section image: a university staff member standing in front of a visual board that displays AI related icons, data, and diagrams to show the adoption and encourage readers to picture themselves using AI.

This comprehensive guide provides college leadership with a grounding in the fundamentals of AI and the types that will have the most impact on higher ed.

We’ll explain in plain language how they work and their benefits.

Next, we’ll take a thorough look at the major challenges facing institutions of higher education. The challenges are familiar to you. The opportunities for overcoming them with AI, we hope, will be new and eye-opening.

As mission-driven organizations, we must also take a wider view of our role in the future of work and the world students will enter. To that end, we’ll look to experts and researchers to understand how AI will alter existing jobs, eliminate some, and create whole new fields.

Finally, we’ll get down to brass tacks with recommendations about how to lead your institution’s successful adoption of AI. We’ll provide a checklist to assess vendors and products, along with ideas to jumpstart a culture of AI.

Adopting AI is a major opportunity for higher education institutions to improve student outcomes, reduce costs, and become more competitive.

To get it right, they need to be strategic and swift.

This guide is your blueprint.

Read on to explore more.

Part 2: The Era of AI: Now and Tomorrow

Part 3: AI in Higher Education

Part 4: The Future of Work

Part 5: The AI Strategy and Adoption Plan