Why AI is forcing universities back to basics

Laurie Pearcey
Adviser to the President and College Master
The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen

Technology is changing how students learn, but Laurie Pearcey says the rise of AI is also reinforcing the importance of foundational knowledge, critical thinking, and face-to-face learning.

Gavin Allen: How will AI and digital technology transform university research and teaching?

Laurie Pearcey: The honest answer is no one knows precisely – but it's going to be profound. Universities have grappled with unprecedented technological disruption over the past 30 years. They were told there was no way they could move their entire learning and teaching operations online. Then suddenly, within a few days in 2020, they did it. Like Covid, AI is forcing universities to rethink how they curate their student experience, how they assess students, and so on. Some foresee the end of the university, but I believe technology reinforces the value of what university is fundamentally all about.

Gavin Allen: In what way?

Laurie Pearcey: In the pandemic, online learning made people rethink and appreciate the value of the physical, face-to-face campus environment. What they’d taken for granted had suddenly been ripped out from under their feet. The core university mission to produce and disseminate knowledge will always remain, but AI will force us to reassess the value of the humanities and social sciences. We’re currently seeing a change in demand and enrolments there, but in the long-term, they will rebound because they give people an immense capacity to think about the “why.” Even in the brief time of GenAI, we've learned the phenomenal value in making sure we ask the right questions. Garbage in, garbage out.

Gavin Allen: Has there been a decline in critical thinking?

Laurie Pearcey: No, but people's attention spans are being challenged like never before. TikTok, Douyin, short videos, the ability for us to hold a universe of information at our fingertips: our brains are trying to adjust to that, but they weren't designed for it. Technology should almost force us to go back to basics – fundamental things like being able to sit and take notes in a lecture theatre. Countless studies show your ability to recall and process information is far greater if you've taken handwritten notes, as opposed to an audio recording on your phone, or notes typed into your laptop. Similarly, you read a physical text with more depth than a digital one. Critical thinking is vital to the quality of the graduates we hope to cultivate. And businesses and governments expect it. If a fresh graduate comes into your workplace using AI tools on a scale like never before, with hallucinations still a thing, and where so much is predicated on the human-bot interaction, then you’ll want to be damned sure they can get the right answers and spot the garbage.

Gavin Allen: Will it intensify the link between what was the purity of the university experience and the need to get a job at the end of it?

Laurie Pearcey: It could heighten employment anxiety because of workforce disruption and uncertainty about which industries and jobs remain secure. Alternatively, AI could make workplaces so productive that people have more time to pursue further study or engage more deeply with subjects that interest them. In China, concerns about the graduate employment market and broader economy are already shaping student choices, with more graduates seeking the perceived stability of the civil service. We recently held an alumni event in Shanghai focused on navigating anxiety around workplace volatility, AI, lockdown experiences, and broader mental health challenges.

Gavin Allen: So how should universities approach AI?

Laurie Pearcey: There are faculty members in universities around the world who take a pretty puritanical approach to regulating the use of generative AI in the classroom, assessments, and the broader curriculum. I think they’re short-sighted and cutting off a fundamental source of literacy that their students will depend upon in the workforce or, if they pursue postgraduate careers, as future academics themselves. We've an entire generation of undergraduates who are already digital natives and now becoming AI literate in a way that their professors simply aren't. That’s going to create really interesting challenges.

Gavin Allen: How are you adapting to that?

Laurie Pearcey: For the past two years, we’ve been running AI workshops for administrative staff to build AI literacy across the organization – not to cut jobs, but to help people adapt to a rapidly evolving technology. I use tools like DeepSeek myself when writing or preparing speeches in Chinese, which is still my second language. But AI is only useful if you have the knowledge to recognize when it gets something wrong. As one Australian computer scientist friend put it, AI is “98% brilliant” – the challenge is spotting the 2% that’s rubbish. In that sense, AI has actually reinforced the importance of strong foundational knowledge in every discipline.

Gavin Allen: What does it do to university partnerships with the private sector and particularly with companies specializing in technology?

Laurie Pearcey: Since the emergence of the AI craze, we've seen an intensification of our partnerships with industry in Shenzhen. That's partially the product of our expertise in robotics, machine learning, and big data, and our longstanding partnership with industries blazing a new trail in Shenzhen in this space, including Huawei; and also, the political and financial capital that's being invested in AI. It has brought new momentum to the way we collaborate with industry, both with traditional players and dynamic, emerging young start-ups around AI. What we can offer is an army of incredibly bright, tech-savvy young people, drawn from the top 1% of the gaokao (Chinese National College Entrance Examination) – who can diagnose where AI tools would be an amazing fit within the context of your business and solve your “wicked challenge.”

Industry is ready for that conversation, because too many are jumping on the AI bandwagon without quite knowing how or why, so they’re doing it superficially. Universities and our undergraduates can work with industry, government and communities on how AI can make a real difference.

“For that to work, industry and government need to collaborate with universities, universities need a pipeline of talented graduates, and open-source technology needs to remain accessible. China is playing an especially important role in building that ecosystem, through companies like Huawei and DeepSeek.”

China plays a really exciting role in open-source, because this is a fundamental part of the ecosystem. That's where Huawei, DeepSeek, and so many players in this space give us the enabling power to have those really meaningful conversations. That's where it gets really interesting.