Artificial intelligence (AI) has long served universities as a helpful junior colleague—fast, eager, and dependent on detailed instructions. But according to the UPCEA report, Predictions 2026: Insights for Online & Professional Education, this era is coming to an end. The next phase, agentic AI, is framed not as smarter assistance but as autonomous execution, a shift that could fundamentally change how universities operate. Ray Schroeder, Senior Fellow at UPCEA, predicts a second wave of AI approaching 2026. Unlike current AI, which responds to requests, agentic AI acts independently: “…agentic AI becomes a 24/7 project manager. It can understand a high-level goal, create a multi-step plan, execute that plan across different software systems, and learn from its mistakes without human prompting. This will save time and money for universities and accomplish work that would have been too expensive or time consuming in the past.” The shift is one of agency, not intelligence.
