What Is AI Infrastructure? Why the model is only one layer of the AI stack. - Qamar Zia, INVENEW

AI infrastructure is everything underneath the application that lets models train, serve, scale, route, retrieve context, stay observable, and run at a cost the business can live with.

For builders, this matters because many AI apps do not fail because the model is weak.

They fail because the system around the model is weak.

Latency was not planned for.

Inference costs ran away.

The serving layer could not scale.

The data layer did not provide the right context.

The agent had no audit trail.

No one could explain what happened when something broke.

That is the real infrastructure problem.

https://www.invenew.com/briefing.html?utm_source=invenew.beehiiv.com&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=what-is-ai-infrastructure&_bhlid=1ffb75fceaebe28128e475faee2946f38b0dfc1d#recent-issues

Free and Affordable Platforms for Issuing Online Badges to Students in 2026 - Marc Berman, Programming Insider

Digital credentials, micro-credentials, and digital badges have become the standard way universities, training providers, and event organizers verify and share what students have learned. The platforms that issue them vary widely in price, features, and flexibility, and Credly, while well known, charges a minimum of around $2,500 for 500 badges with no published pricing and no free tier, putting it out of reach for most smaller institutions and programs. In this guide, we reviewed the best free and affordable platforms for issuing digital badges and micro-credentials to students in 2026, with Certifier ranked first. Whether you run a university program, a professional training course, or an online certification, this list covers the options that deliver real value without locking you into annual contracts or opaque pricing.

https://programminginsider.com/free-and-affordable-platforms-for-issuing-online-badges-to-students-in-2026/

In California’s ‘Lithium Valley,’ students are training for jobs that haven’t yet materialized - Erin Lode, Hechinger Report

The situation speaks to a conundrum faced by local colleges when a new industry promises to come to town: Local residents want the new jobs. Companies say they want to hire local residents, but they’d need additional skills and training. In the middle are schools like Imperial Valley College, left to figure out the best timing to launch a new program that will prepare students for the new industry: soon enough that they can apply for jobs before they’re filled by skilled out-of-towners, but not so soon that students are left waiting for jobs. 

https://hechingerreport.org/in-californias-lithium-valley-students-are-training-for-jobs-that-havent-yet-materialized/

Work-based Learning: Who Gets Paid? - Nichole Torpey-Saboe & Akua Amankwah-Ayeh, Strada

Work-based learning is linked to better early career outcomes, including higher earnings and greater likelihood of securing college-level employment. As part of the 2025 State Opportunity Index, states were benchmarked using student-reported participation in at least one of five types of paid work-based learning at public two- and four-year institutions: internships, apprenticeships, co-ops, practica, and undergraduate research experiences. The findings, based on surveys of more than 56,000 students at public four- and two-year institutions, showed that despite growing recognition of the value of work-based learning, access remains uneven. Nationally, only 43 percent of students at public four-year institutions report at least one of these experiences. At public two-year institutions, participation rates are even lower. 

https://www.strada.org/reports/work-based-learning-who-gets-paid

An augmented reality tool for accessible learning - Cindy Lam, Sai Kit Yeung, Kenichiro Takei; Times Higher Education

Combining GenAI with simple augmented reality tools offers a practical way to support accessible, adaptable and interdisciplinary learning. So, how can we make GenAI more intuitive, accessible and relevant across disciplines? One approach is to pair it with simple visual tools. GenAI-powered AquaReality cards offer a low-cost and scalable way to bring abstract concepts to life, while supporting interactive and interdisciplinary learning. 

https://www.timeshighereducation.com/campus/augmented-reality-tool-accessible-learning

10 ways micro-credentials are changing how companies hire - Jenny Milam, MSN

For decades, the path to a good job was fairly straightforward: earn a degree, build a resume, and start applying. But hiring is changing. Employers increasingly care less about where candidates went to school and more about whether they can actually do the job. Enter micro-credentials. These short, focused certifications validate specific skills and can often be completed in weeks rather than years. From technology and healthcare to marketing and project management, micro-credentials are helping job seekers prove their abilities while giving employers a faster, more practical way to identify talent. Here are 10 ways micro-credentials are transforming hiring practices.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/careersandeducation/10-ways-micro-credentials-are-changing-how-companies-hire/ss-AA25vdHg

A Course Refresh this Summer - Ray Schroeder, Inside Higher Ed

While in the past century college was about filling student minds with the “facts of the field,” one key aspect of refreshing the courses and curriculum is to recognize that rote memorization is no longer a foundation of college education. Teaching and learning now is far less about a list of historical facts that are instantly available anywhere and at any time using the ever-enhancing technologies. Rather, our courses should be more about the skills of accessing relevant facts and information as well as the refinement of our own perspectives, ethos, philosophies and strategies in interpreting and applying the data tapped through new technologies. Reviewing our course materials and assessments with this in mind is a very useful step in updating courses to the current realities of the workplace. This calls for connecting students with industry before they graduate.

https://www.insidehighered.com/opinion/columns/online-trending-now/2026/06/24/course-refresh-summer

Can microcredentials drive new demand for higher ed? - Alcino Donadel, University Business

Higher education leaders, employers and students agree that microcredentials are critical for strengthening enrollment, improving workforce readiness and modernizing curriculum amid rapid AI-driven change. A new Coursera survey of more than 3,500 respondents worldwide found broad support for embedding industry-recognized credentials into degree pathways as institutions face mounting pressure to improve career outcomes and adapt curricula more quickly. In many cases, U.S. respondents expressed greater confidence in microcredentials than their global peers in India, the United Kingdom and other countries.

https://universitybusiness.com/can-microcredentials-drive-new-demand-for-higher-ed/

Colleges hit in cyberattack by group behind Canvas breach, Google says - Laura Spitalniak, Higher Ed Dive

Dozens of higher education institutions may have been hit by another attack from the cybercrime group behind the May hack against Canvas, according to the Google Threat Intelligence Group and cybersecurity firm Mandiant. From May 27 and June 9, the group ShinyHunters potentially gained access to the systems of over 100 organizations by targeting the Oracle PeopleSoft software suite. A majority of them are based in the U.S., and 68% are within the higher education sector, GTIG and Mandiant said in a post Thursday. ShinyHunters twice gained unauthorized access to Instructure’s Canvas learning management system last month, disrupting final exam season at colleges nationwide.

https://www.highereddive.com/news/colleges-hit-in-cyberattack-by-group-behind-canvas-breach-google-says/822831/

Will learning curated by employers replace degrees? - Louise Nicol, University World News

Universities remain central to research, civic life, social mobility and the development of deep intellectual capability. But goodwill alone will not protect the sector. A more pressing question now sits beneath debates about employability and skills shortages. If universities do not future-proof their offer through deeper and more credible partnerships with employers and industry, what exactly prevents employers from educating and training people themselves? This question was foreshadowed in recent analyses of shifting global labour markets and the role of higher education.

https://www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?story=202606121137019

How to Save the US Education System - Mathew Burrows of the Stimson Center, National Interest

 Compared with other countries, the United States is losing ground. The OECD’s latest Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) scores showed the United States in 16th place out of 81 countries in science, 34th in math, and 20th in reading. East Asian countries typically have the highest rankings. The US decline is particularly evident in another OECD assessment that measures adult literacy and numeracy skills in advanced economies. In a comparison between the oldest generation—those born from 1947 to 1957—and those born from 1988 to 1996, the “US gains are especially weak.” The United States was dead last among 26 countries in math gains and second-to-last in literacy gains among the younger generation. Only 45 percent of US adults read at a 6th-grade level or above. 

https://nationalinterest.org/feature/how-to-save-the-us-education-system

Study finds detectors struggle to accurately identify amount of AI content when papers have been partially human written - Georgia Luckhurst, Times Higher Education

For the study, published in Education and Information Technologies, researcher Lucky E. Atamhenwan fed 81 sample essays into Turnitin. The scripts ranged from those that were 100 per cent LLM-generated – either by ChatGPT, Copilot or Gemini – to those written solely by people. Turnitin did not flag any of the essays that were 100 per cent human written as being generated by AI. And in every instance in which the detector flagged AI-generated words, it was indeed due to the presence of LLM-generated work in those samples. But the software struggled with the scripts that were partially AI-written, consistently failing to identify the correct percentage of LLM-generated work included.

https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/inconsistent-ai-detection-should-prompt-assessment-rethink

The race to reimagine higher education: How Canadian universities can lead the AI transformation. - Joël Blit, University Affairs

Universities are among the most durable institutions human beings have ever created. While a scholar from the Middle Ages might have found parts of the modern campus bewildering, they would still recognize the basic form: experts at the front of rooms, students organized into courses, knowledge divided into disciplines, credentials awarded after examinations. For all the technological change around them, universities have remained remarkably stable because their core product has always depended on something difficult to capture and mechanise: expert tacit knowledge. For that same reason, they are now about to be transformed.  The real significance of artificial intelligence is not that it can write essays, summarize documents, or answer emails. It is that, for the first time in history, machines can capture tacit knowledge: the practical, experience-based know-how that experts possess but cannot fully explain. It is this tacit knowledge that has made doctors, lawyers, professors, and other experts so valuable in the current economy. Machines could not do what we ourselves could not write down. Machine learning changed that.

https://universityaffairs.ca/opinion/the-race-to-reimagine-higher-education/

Leading the Era of AI - Michael Malone, Higher Ed Dive

The rise of artificial intelligence (AI) has pushed higher education to a crossroads, and a paradigm shift is required. Universities who expect to lead in this new AI-shaped landscape must reimagine higher education as a hyper-personalized journey for students, enabled by AI, interactive data, predictive analytics, and adaptive technologies from end to end. Integrating AI into every fiber of the educational experience is essential to this approach. Yet it begs a complement, one that emphasizes “human judgment in the AI era” to foster leaders who don’t just follow AI-driven outputs, but possess the critical thinking and judgment to explain, defend, or override them.

https://www.highereddive.com/spons/leading-the-era-of-ai/821674/

What colleges must learn now from the Canvas cyberattack - Steven W. Teppler and Carly Rothstein, University Business

The incident highlights a challenge many institutions have yet to fully confront: cybersecurity accountability does not disappear simply because data resides within a vendor-managed environment. Modern learning management platforms are now institutional environments containing years of communications, uploads, archived coursework, student interactions, advising discussions, accommodation-related exchanges, and operational records. The lesson is that universities now face a form of distributed digital liability in which institutional risk extends well beyond campus boundaries. Data may reside with third-party vendors, cloud providers, integrations, faculty-created repositories, archived course environments, and decentralized academic systems with limited visibility into what information remains accessible, retained, or duplicated.

https://universitybusiness.com/what-colleges-must-learn-now-from-the-canvas-cyberattack/

Americans looking for proof of the value of higher ed - Matt Zalaznick, University Business

Americans need some convincing about the true value of higher ed. They “haven’t given up on college,” but institutions need to prove that what students learn will lead to civic and economic opportunities, says a new analysis. And the most important place to provide that evidence is in the communities surrounding campus, says the report, “Trust in Higher Education Starts Local,” from C&S (Campus and Community Solutions), a civic education nonprofit.“Higher ed doesn’t have a PR problem. It has a proof problem,”  says the organization that surveyed more than 2,400 adults in the U.S. to examine attitudes toward colleges and universities—and to chart a path forward.

https://universitybusiness.com/americans-looking-for-proof-in-the-value-of-higher-ed/

A framework for ensuring student AI proficiency - Margaret Ellis, Times Higher Education

Over the past few semesters, I have structured my teaching around a framework that helps students build that capability: demystify, use and reflect. Many students arrive with strong opinions about AI but only a partial understanding of how these systems work. Some see them as nearly magical tools that can produce answers instantly. Others dismiss them as unreliable or assume they are only useful for technical specialists. Demystifying AI begins with explaining the basic ideas behind large language models (LLMs) and related systems. We show students how these models are trained, what kinds of data they rely on and why their outputs can sometimes appear confident even when they are incorrect.

https://www.timeshighereducation.com/campus/framework-ensuring-student-ai-proficiency

The state of international enrollment in 6 charts - Laura Spitalniak, Higher Ed Dive

Last summer, financial analysts predicted that the Trump administration’s restrictions on international enrollment and increased scrutiny of foreign students would create financial risk for colleges. They argued that those policies tarnish the reputational shine of U.S. higher education and could have an outsized impact on tuition revenue, as international students often pay full price. nrollment data has done little to assuage those concerns. Even before President Donald Trump retook office lastE year, growth in international enrollment in the U.S. had slowed after rebounding following the pandemic.

https://www.highereddive.com/news/the-state-of-international-enrollment-in-6-charts/821753/

Transforming Enrollment Management in the Field of Online Learning - Vickie S. Cook, OLC Online Learning Journal

The landscape of enrollment management in higher education related to all modalities of learning is undergoing a significant transformation driven by evolving student expectations, shifting demographics, and the necessity for institutions to optimize operational efficiency. Traditionally centered on human-driven processes and relational strategies, enrollment management for online learning enterprises must now integrate advanced technologies such as Business Process Automation (BPA) and artificial intelligence (AI) to remain effective and competitive. This manuscript for online learning administrators and enrollment management leaders will explore the systems-level continuum from Business Process Mapping (BPM) to AI-driven functionality, highlighting the strategic evolution of enrollment operations within the field of online learning. 

https://olj.onlinelearningconsortium.org/index.php/olj/article/view/5482/1584

UPCEA Releases Guidebook on Employer Engagement and Credential Innovation

UPCEA, the online and professional education association, today released a new guidebook designed to help colleges and universities strengthen employer partnerships and build institutional capacity for workforce-aligned credential innovation. Developed through a multi-year grant-funded initiative, Expanding Institutional Capacity for Employer Engagement in Credential Innovation provides higher education leaders with practical frameworks, implementation tools, and practitioner-informed strategies for advancing University-to-Business (U2B) engagement. The guidebook builds on UPCEA’s ongoing multi-year credential innovation initiative focused on accelerating the development and delivery of workforce-responsive, noncredit credentials and skills-based learning pathways.

https://www.highereddive.com/press-release/20260609-upcea-releases-guidebook-on-employer-engagement-and-credential-innovation-1/

Remote work — not AI — has sidelined recent college graduates, research finds - Andrea Hsu, NPR

The buzz on college campuses is that AI is disrupting the job market for young college graduates. But new research from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York finds that the culprit may be something else: remote work. An analysis of federal employment data, paired with a deep dive into the flexible work arrangements at one unnamed Fortune 500 tech company, reveals that companies are less likely to hire recent college grads into occupations that can be done remotely. Researchers speculate that employers are reluctant to put such workers in a setting where it's harder to absorb lessons from coworkers.

https://www.npr.org/2026/06/01/nx-s1-5843076/remote-work-college-graduates-unemployment-ai