Women made up only about a quarter of new hires in AI roles in the last year, compared to 50% of new hires in non-AI roles, according to a recent report from LinkedIn. In executive roles, that number drops to just 13%. At the same time, LinkedIn’s research shows that women are more likely to work in roles with high exposure to AI disruption, like customer service, meaning they are also at higher risk for job loss due to AI. AI jobs, whose postings have doubled since 2023, come with a salary premium, on average paying more than twice as much as roles that don’t involve working with AI, according to LinkedIn’s research. But women who do have jobs in AI are disproportionately concentrated in low-paying roles, like data annotators, said Sarah Steinberg, the head of global public policy partnerships at LinkedIn. Across all AI occupations, men have $45,000 higher median pay than women, partly due to the types of jobs they are likelier to have. “AI is creating some of the fastest growing, highest paying and most consequential jobs in the global economy,” said Steinberg. “Women are just strikingly underrepresented.”
Professional, Continuing, and Online Education Update by UPCEA
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Friday, October 9, 2026
Universities urged to build coalitions to address SDGs - Kalinga Seneviratne, University World News
Universities should take part in growing “multi-stakeholder coalitions” in society to strengthen education for sustainable development (ESD). That was the key message of a two-hour webinar organised on 30 September by the Higher Education Sustainability Initiative (HESI) of the United Nations and attended by over 150 participants from across the world, many of whom were not academics. In presenting a HESI toolkit on how to grow the green and sustainable economy, the convenor, Debra Rowe, who has been the president of the US Partnership for Education for Sustainable Development for twenty years, said that by bringing in a diversity of groups working on green development, including finance and development experts, “we've been talking about a multi-stakeholder coalition.”
https://www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?story=20261002102236341
Community knowledge belongs at the heart of higher education - Jack Layton and Sue Griffiths, University World News
In recent years, universities in the United Kingdom have scrutinised their relationships with neighbouring communities – exploring what these should and could look like. That requires asking what it takes to undertake meaningful community engagement, how their research can contribute to local economic growth and how their facilities can be repurposed to support local health and well-being.Part of this is about recognising that the traditional academic ecosystem can be detached from people’s everyday lives and concerns. Data extracted from places. Research trapped behind paywalls. Value derived from rankings and citations. Last week, the Institute for Community Studies at the Young Foundation launched the Journal for Community Studies. The journal brings academic research into direct conversation with community voice, lived experience and practical knowledge. It challenges a persistent imbalance in how evidence is produced and valued, where communities are too often treated as subjects of study rather than partners in inquiry.
https://www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?story=20260930112346517
Thursday, October 8, 2026
College Leaders Are Using A.I. Students Call It Hypocrisy. - Mark Arsenault and Alan Blinder, NY Times
College professors and administrators have been busting students for cheating with artificial intelligence for several years. Now, the professors and administrators are getting in trouble, too. Dartmouth College last week announced it was investigating its provost, Santiago Schnell, after the college’s student-run newspaper found that some of his published writing appeared written by A.I. Dr. Schnell, a mathematical biologist, is perhaps the most prominent in a growing cast of college professors and administrators who have been accused of using A.I. in a way that crosses ethical lines. There have been instances of opinion articles, research papers and even campuswide messages to students showing traces of A.I. influence. He issued a statement apologizing. Administrators wring their hands, and sometime issue punishments, when students outsource writing assignments to a robot to save time or avoid the hard work of thinking.
Career Prep When No One Knows What’s Next - Colleen Flaherty, Inside Higher Ed
Cameron Sublett, senior director of innovation and incubation at FoundationCCC, which supports California’s community colleges, explained that job forecasting—with its direct implications for the postsecondary mission—has “always been a mad science,” and that AI disruption has added “so many more layers of complexity, confusion and noise.” Citing the economist David Autor, Sublett said that society is now in an “era of artificial intelligence uncertainty,” in which “history and secular trends no longer hold their predictive value.” Competing studies on AI’s labor-market effects regularly contradict each other, absent standard measures or methodologies, he continued. Shawn VanDerziel, president and CEO of the National Association of Colleges and Employers, agreed that “the current employment environment is challenging for job seekers and employers.” That’s due to the uncertainty around AI, but also the broader economy and policy shifts, including on tariffs, he said.
Can GenAI actually help build better learning modules? - Toni Jones, et al; RMIT Australia
Building a high-quality online learning module is a substantial undertaking that involves a range of tasks, such as writing and organising content, developing activities, sourcing multimedia, structuring pages for accessibility, and aligning it all with learning outcomes. At GAILE, we've been curious about where Gen AI might help in that process, and where it does not. Gen AI can accelerate the production of learning resources, but its outputs still require careful educational judgement. We have previously explored how Gen AI can support lesson planning, learning simulations and question generation, and across these examples, a consistent pattern has emerged. Without expert guidance, AI-generated content can be fluent yet generic. The educator therefore remains central to shaping outputs through pedagogical knowledge, critical review and instructional expertise.
Wednesday, October 7, 2026
From AGI to ASI - Tim Genewein, et al; arXiv
After characterizing ASI, the report discusses four potential pathways from AGI to ASI: scaling AGI, AI paradigm shifts, recursive improvement, and ASI emerging from large-scale multi-agent collectives. The report then discusses possible frictions and bottlenecks along these pathways. Determining whether the impact of these frictions will be negligible or substantial raises a number of concrete open research questions. Due to large uncertainties for predicting ASI progress, it cannot be ruled out that AI progress might continue to accelerate over the next years. This could imply that the image of a single transformative step change, caused by the introduction of human-level AGI into our society, could be inaccurate. More apt might be the prospect of a series of transformative societal changes caused by AI-enabled progress and breakthroughs across many areas of science and technology. Preparing for this prospect requires a massively interdisciplinary endeavour of global scope and interest.
How one president is creating new pathways for older students - Alcino Donadel, University Business
The Western New Mexico University president has a personal stake in this mission. A GED graduate, Coll was a firefighter and Marine before he entered college. His work portfolio and community college certificates helped him earn his associate degree, a critical moment that propelled him into higher education leadership. “I see my own lived experience in so many of our students,” says Coll, a former provost of Western Oregon University. “Those who come in with a GED to be a welder should be able to come back a year later to start working on their baccalaureate degree, and eventually their master’s.” “This is the value of our university,” he adds, “to embrace students where they’re at.” Building new academic pathways is also a vital enrollment strategy. Demographic changes have imperiled most institutions’ traditional student pipeline, forcing leaders to create onramps for adults and programs that entice stopped-out students to return to college.
Friendship is built over time, through ordinary moments – I teach lonely college students to notice them - Justin Vaughn, the Conversation
Many new students want close relationships, but feel anxious about initiating them and have had little practice sustaining them.I realized that my students rarely spoke to one another, and went entire semesters without learning their classmates’ names. Many students seemed unsure how to cross the few feet between them and their peers and make the social connection they craved. Factual. Free. For everyone. I designed a freshman honors seminar, “Friendship & Society,” around this uncertainty, combining the academic study of friendship with practical exercises in forming and sustaining it.
Tuesday, October 6, 2026
Education agents are coming. Prepare now for international recruitment’s new chapter. - David King, University Business
U.S. universities and colleges, however, have chosen to go it alone. Many build international recruitment infrastructure themselves, relying on international travel, admissions staff and direct marketing. This stance is the result of a number of factors: regulatory history, institutional caution, and a belief that their brand strength alone is sufficient. Here’s the thing. Many international students looking to enroll in U.S. institutions already use and rely on education agents. I’ve visited many of our agent partners and I hear them actively recruiting for U.S. universities. They’re helping students navigate the U.S. application process, preparing them for standardized tests, and facilitating enrollments. For U.S. institutions, a failure to collaborate with these agents is both a missed opportunity and a risk. Are the agents able to accurately represent the school?
The Students Crowdfunding for Tuition - Johanna Alonso, Inside Higher Ed
GoFundMe, the largest crowdfunding site, has seen an over 20 percent increase in fundraisers for tuition and related expenses over the past year, according to data the company shared with Inside Higher Ed. That rise comes as Americans have reckoned with rising costs under the Trump administration and declines in social services like food assistance and Medicaid, leaving many students with less money to put toward their education. The changes to federal student loans have already begun affecting some students and are likely to exacerbate the affordability problem. And though private loans are available, research shows about four in 10 students would not qualify for those loans, and surveys have found that the majority of Americans don’t think taking on debt to pursue higher education is worth it.
Stanford apologizes, saying AI-altered photo that changed student’s gender and race violated policy -Minyvonne Burke, NBC
Stanford University said the use of artificial intelligence to alter the race and appearance of students in a promotional photo violated its policy and was “a serious error in judgment.” The controversy centers on an image of three students posing in front of Star Ginger in the university’s dining hall, according to The Stanford Review, the student-run newspaper, which first reported the story. The original photo shows a female student and two male students holding their plates as they pose for the camera. The altered image shows one of the male students replaced with an AI-generated Black female student. The two other people in the altered image were made to look noticeably slimmer. The Review reported that Stanford Residential & Dining Enterprises used the altered image in its advertisements. Its editor in chief, Garret Molloy, said the altered photos were placed on welcome banners around campus.
Monday, October 5, 2026
University of Phoenix study finds GenAI use among online adult learners associated with academic performance and technology confidence - University of Phoenix
University of Phoenix scholars have published new peer-reviewed research examining how non-traditional undergraduate students use generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) in online higher education. The study found that more frequent GenAI use was significantly associated with higher academic performance and stronger confidence in technology skills, while lower confidence in reading, writing and math and greater time demands from work, study or family responsibilities did not significantly predict use.
When Nontraditional Students Become the Norm - Joshua Bay, Inside Higher Ed
Adult learners, working students, student parents, transfer students and first-generation students are often grouped under the broad umbrella of “nontraditional” students. While their experiences differ, they also highlight the various ways higher education is, or isn’t, designed around the realities of students’ lives. Many of these students are navigating similar pressures: balancing college with work and family responsibilities, managing financial challenges and figuring out systems that weren’t necessarily built with them in mind. And as these experiences become increasingly common across higher education, they raise a bigger question: If so-called nontraditional students reflect the reality of today’s college population, does it still make sense to call them nontraditional?
Andreessen Horowitz launches AI school as college alternative - Megan Cerullo, CBS News
Venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz announced on Tuesday that it is launching an academy, billed as a college alternative, for aspiring AI and other technology entrepreneurs. The unaccredited program, called the Horowitz Andreessen Academy, will focus its curriculum on teaching people how to build products and services from the ground up using AI. Specifically, the academy will provide instruction geared to subjects such as designing AI systems, fundraising for startups, selling businesses and storytelling. Students won't take tests or be assigned homework but will instead focus on building real projects. Courses will be taught by tech entrepreneurs, with the academy naming OpenAI CEO Sam Altman as either an instructor or guest lecturer. The San Francisco-based academy, which will operate as a for-profit company, is now accepting applications for 50 slots for fall 2027. The program is one year long and tuition-free.
Friday, October 2, 2026
How to stay smart in the age of AI: the science of critical thinking - Helen Pearson, Nature
Earlier this year, education researcher Lixiang Yan realized that students could outsource all of their work for his university course to artificial intelligence. In praise of human teachers: universities must resist outsourcing everything to AI. Yan, who teaches at Tsinghua University in Beijing, China, was using an agentic AI called Codex to set up an online course on a learning-management platform. But it quickly became clear that the adept AI could independently complete all the assignments, answer questions and participate in discussions, “without the learner being intellectually engaged” at all, Yan says. The experience made Yan think that teaching students to reason and think for themselves “is more critical than ever”, he says. And he is hardly alone.
Two years of OpenAI Academy - OpenAI
To ensure the benefits of AI are broadly shared, people need the skills and confidence to use it in their everyday lives. Since launching in September 2024, OpenAI Academy has helped people build those skills through practical training for tasks ranging from teaching and running a small business to developing software. Over the past two years, OpenAI Academy has hosted more than 250 events, and more than 4 million people have engaged with Academy content. That work has brought together educators, small business owners, developers, nonprofit leaders and community members to learn, practice, and share what works. For this next chapter, we’re expanding OpenAI Academy through a new trainer program that prepares people and organizations to teach Academy material in their communities. This program builds on our work with partners and will make training and ongoing support available closer to where people live and work.
https://openai.com/index/two-years-of-openai-academy/
U of Kentucky Online recognizes faculty, staff for excellence in online teaching - Lindsey Piercy, UKnow
Three faculty members and four staff members were honored Sept. 16 during the University of Kentucky Online Awards ceremony, which featured the inaugural presentation of the UK Online Teaching Award. Now in its second year, the UKO Advocate recognition expands the UKO Excellence Awards by giving UK Online staff an opportunity to nominate faculty or staff members who work closely with them to support online teaching and learning across the university. The four UKO Excellence Award recipients are staff members nominated by their peers for their contributions to UK Online. Established in 2024, the UKO Excellence Awards provide an opportunity for the unit to celebrate its accomplishments and recognize staff members who contribute to its success.
Thursday, October 1, 2026
The next AI divide is between learning and earning - Taha Bawa and Michele Malejki, World Economic Forum
Young people are rapidly adopting artificial intelligence (AI) but knowing how to use AI does not automatically translate into jobs or income. Training should extend to hands-on projects, such as internships and apprenticeships, so young people can hone their skills. A lack of access to devices, connectivity and professional networks can prevent young people from benefiting from AI.
Small Moves, Big Impact: Building a Positive Climate in Online Classes - Amie Cieminski, Faculty Focus
One of the challenges that online instructors face is creating a sense of connectedness in which students feel present, “seen,” heard, and part of the learning community. We know student engagement and learning are enhanced when students feel connected—students to the content, students to the instructor, and students to each other. In online environments, social presence is when students perceive that others are real, accessible, and engaged. Researchers such as Garrison (2017) and Lowenthal and Dunlap (2018) have linked increased social presence to higher student satisfaction, stronger participation, and more meaningful learning experiences in online settings. Given this, I offer several strategies to increase social presence and improve your online classroom climate.
The economics of AI - McKinsey Quarterly
AI is getting more expensive for companies. As rising token usage and workflow complexity make costs harder to predict, leaders need new ways to manage AI economics. Even with token prices falling, AI operating costs keep rising. Companies that get it right understand the six drivers behind this gap.
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