Google has committed $1 billion over the next three years to equip U.S. higher education institutions and nonprofits with artificial intelligence training, research resources, and advanced tools. More than 100 universities, including major public systems like Texas A&M and the University of North Carolina, have already joined the initiative. Participating schools may receive direct funding, cloud computing credits, and free access to Google’s advanced Gemini chatbot for students. The investment—which covers both cash support and the value of Google’s paid AI services—aims to eventually reach every accredited nonprofit college in the U.S., with similar programs under discussion abroad, Senior Vice President James Manyika said.
Thursday, August 21, 2025
Inside a Network of Fake College Websites - Josh Moody and Kathryn Palmer, Inside Higher Ed
Dozens of fake college websites, which appear to be connected, are pushing scams. Many of the sites appear to be built with or supplemented by generative AI. “It took me a while to realize it wasn’t an actual institution,” said Aaron Ament, president of the National Student Legal Defense Network and a lawyer who has investigated for-profit colleges that have defrauded students. “For the average person who’s looking for a program, you could easily see how people would think it’s a real institution.” Michigan attorney general Dana Nessel warned consumers about Southeastern Michigan University in an alert last week, following a complaint from Eastern Michigan University to her office about the fraudulent website using deceptive practices in an effort to scam students.
Anti-Perfectionist Productivity Coach - There's an AI for That (TAAFT) on Notion
This prompt turns the AI into a high-empathy, anti-perfectionist productivity coach, someone who doesn’t force rigid systems onto messy lives but instead creates flexible, psychologically safe, adaptive frameworks. It’s designed for people who struggle with traditional productivity advice because of real-life unpredictability, resistance patterns, emotional fluctuations, or perfectionistic paralysis. Instead of treating resistance as a flaw, it treats it with curiosity and compassion, helping users map where and why they get stuck, and designing flexible, adaptive plans around their real patterns. The system emphasizes weekly momentum over daily rigidity, deep work tuned to natural energy rhythms, and reflection that prioritizes learning, not self-criticism. Everything in the prompt is built around the core philosophy: progress over perfection, always.
Wednesday, August 20, 2025
AI Can Facilitate Mastery Learning in Higher Education - Ray Schroeder, Inside Higher Ed
What if higher education moved beyond rigid calendars and assembly-line teaching to AI-powered, mastery-based learning where every student truly understands the material before moving forward? I always had an uncomfortable feeling in the pit of my stomach when I submitted a C, D or F as a final grade. I felt that I had failed my student. However, I had a full classroom and there was not enough time or opportunity to provide individualized attention to each student. Perhaps the new generation of university instructors who partner with AI assistants will enjoy the confidence that all their learners will master the topic of the class with the help of AI. No learner will be left behind, and none will be victims of the assembly-line model of teaching in higher education.
AI in the Classroom: MIT Study Explores ChatGPT and Critical Thinking - University of Louisiana at LaFayette, Distance Learning
As instructional designers and technologists within the Office of Distance Learning, one of our goals is to help faculty navigate new and changing technologies in education, including AI. Our website includes a reference bank of generative AI tools and possible uses, as well as guidelines for both encouraging and preventing AI usage. We’re in good company as institutions worldwide consider the role of AI in education, including MIT. Recently, the MIT Media Lab published a study raising important questions about how generative AI may be shaping student learning.
OpenAI’s Deep Research Agent Is Coming for White-Collar Work - Will Knight, Wired
Deep Research is available as part of all paid ChatGPT plans, although most users are capped at 10 queries per month. (People on the $200 ChatGPT Pro plan get 120 queries per month.) It takes a query, such as “Write me a report on the Massachusetts health insurance industry,” or “Tell me about WIRED’s coverage of the Department of Government Efficiency,” and then comes up with a plan, searching for relevant websites, combing through their content, and deciding what links to click and what information deserves further investigation. After exploring for sometimes tens of minutes, it synthesizes its findings into a detailed report, which may include citations, data, and charts.
Tuesday, August 19, 2025
Indiana U to Launch GenAI 101 Course for Students, Staff - Ashley Mowreader, Inside Higher Ed
A new, self-paced course at Indiana University teaches students, faculty and staff generative AI skills and expertise. As generative artificial intelligence skills have become more in demand among employers, colleges and universities have expanded opportunities for students to engage with the tools. Indiana University is no exception. It’s developed a free, online course for campus community members to gain a basic understanding of generative AI and how the tools could fit into their daily lives and work. GenAI 101 is available to anyone with a campus login and comes with a certificate of in-demand skills for people who complete it.
Gemini just got two of ChatGPT's best features - and they're free - Sabrina Ortiz, ZDnet
Gemini can now remember chat context for personalized answers. Users can use Temporary Chat for added privacy. Google also added new data control settings you'll want to look at now. You can now reference your past chats with Google's Gemini AI chatbot for more personalized responses, the company said Wednesday. Google also added a Temporary Chat feature and new data control settings. Everyone, including free users, can take advantage of the features in the Gemini app. While every major AI company is constantly racing to release the latest and greatest AI models, sometimes the most impactful updates are actually the less flashy features that improve the chatbot using experience. These new Gemini features aim to make users' lives easier in ways ChatGPT already has.
Goodbye, $165,000 Tech Jobs. Student Coders Seek Work at Chipotle. - Natasha Singer, NY Times
Among college graduates ages 22 to 27, computer science and computer engineering majors are facing some of the highest unemployment rates, 6.1 percent and 7.5 percent respectively, according to a report from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. That is more than double the unemployment rate among recent biology and art history graduates, which is just 3 percent. “I’m very concerned,” said Jeff Forbes, a former program director for computer science education and workforce development at the National Science Foundation. “Computer science students who graduated three or four years ago would have been fighting off offers from top firms — and now that same student would be struggling to get a job from anyone.”
Monday, August 18, 2025
Why Faculty Hold The Keys To Higher Ed’s AI Digital Transformation - Aviva Legatt, Forbes
If the 20th century belonged to the textbook, the 21st belongs to the prompt. In lecture halls from Toronto to San Diego to Ho Chi Minh City, students are already co-writing their education with algorithms. Nearly 80% of undergraduates worldwide are already using generative AI, often daily. What’s missing is not adoption—it’s alignment. While students are busy teaching themselves AI, most universities remain frozen between prohibition and pilot. Eighty percent of students report that they have no structured AI support for teaching or learning, even as employers accelerate toward AI-mandatory job descriptions. This is more than a skills gap. It’s pedagogical infrastructure debt—every semester without faculty readiness compounds the cost and complexity of catching up.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/
Sydney Uni students will use ChatGPT, so let’s teach them how - Adam Bridgeman and Danny Liu, Financial Review
We now have a “two-lane approach” to assessments. Lane 1 assessments are secure and measure students’ capabilities in live, in-person environments, such as interactive oral assessments, Q&As or demonstrations, skills observations or, yes, sometimes exams. When these assessments are well-designed and executed, with AI use reliably controlled, they safeguard academic integrity and measure whether learning has happened. We’ll also have “open” lane 2 assessments that allow the use of all available and relevant tools, including generative AI. In these assessments, we have essentially banned the banning of AI because (apart from the fact that restricting AI is unenforceable when students are not in front of us) we want to ensure our students can learn, prosper and contribute in the contemporary business and wider world. We’ll assume students are using AI, and they won’t get in trouble for doing so in open lane 2 assessments, as long as they acknowledge how they’ve used it.
The future of customer experience [student experience]: Embracing agentic AI - McKinsey
Let’s look at the next chapter of AI—agentic AI, and how it could unlock the next generation of operational excellence and productivity in service operations. We dig into the high stakes of continued investment in digital transformation and the potential payoffs. We discuss collaborations between the chief information officer (CIO) and COO, and how thoughtful talent strategies can set organizations up for continued digital success. In this episode of McKinsey Talks Operations, McKinsey’s Christian Johnson talks to Malte Kosub, the cofounder and CEO of Parloa, an agentic AI platform that helps customer-centric enterprises build and manage millions of AI agents for customer support and communication. Joining them are Oana Cheta, a partner in McKinsey’s Chicago office who leads generative AI and agentic AI in service operations in North America, and Brian Blackader, a partner in McKinsey’s Düsseldorf office who spends much of his time working with service providers in the customer service space.
Sunday, August 17, 2025
Education as a driving force for self-determination, equity, and the reclamation of knowledge systems - Education International
Marking the International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples (9 August), President Mugwena Maluleke reaffirmed Education International’s commitment to Indigenous Peoples’ right to free, quality, public education that is culturally relevant. On 9 August and every day, Education International (EI) member organisations defend and promote the collective rights of Indigenous educators and students, advocating for their voices to be heard and reflected in the education policies that affect their communities. Education unions also stand as allies to broader movements for land rights, cultural preservation, climate justice, and decolonisation.
4 Steps to Responsible AI Implementation in Education - Rhea Kelly, THE Journal
Researchers at the University of Kansas Center for Innovation, Design & Digital Learning (CIDDL) have published a new framework for the responsible implementation of artificial intelligence at all levels of education, from preschool through higher education. Developed under a cooperative agreement with the United States Department of Education, the framework "is intended to provide guidance on how schools can incorporate AI into its daily operations and curriculum," the university said in a news announcement. The document offers four key recommendations.
How AI Supports Student Mental Health in Higher Education - Erin Brereton, EdTech
Students’ awareness of campus mental health services has grown in recent years, according to research from the Steve Fund, a nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting the emotional well-being of young people of color. Yet, taking advantage of these resources isn’t always easy, as 40% of college students say they’ve found it challenging to access mental health services. In a separate survey conducted by EDUCAUSE, students mentioned that even though their school has introduced additional technology-driven care options, they still face long wait times, says researcher Nicole Muscanell, who co-authored the 2025 EDUCAUSE Students and Technology Report.
Saturday, August 16, 2025
How should higher ed prepare students for a world where AI is everywhere? - Dayton Daily News
The role of education today should be to create broadly literate students who understand how things work, why they work that way, and what the consequences are of inventing and adopting new writing tools. Educators need to face our current moment by teaching the students in front of us and designing learning environments that meet the times, not looking to the past. AI is not to blame for cheating. If students are cheating to get good grades, that is a logical consequence of turning college into diploma factories that churn out workers. We need to rethink that role of college as a degree factory.
OpenAI founder Sam Altman says ChatGPT has graduated from college-level intelligence to PhD-level expertise. - Financial Review
OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman said GPT-5 would give his users access to greater levels of intelligence on their devices, with much greater capability than its current model, which was released 15 months ago. “This is like a superpower that would have been pretty much unimaginable at any previous point in human history,” Altman told a press briefing on Thursday. “Everybody is carrying around one of these [smartphones] that now has a team of PhD-level experts ready to help you with whatever your goals are.” The latest release is aimed at shoring up its lead in the AI race against rivals including Meta, Google, and Elon Musk’s xAI. This week Anthropic, a rival company founded by former OpenAI employees, also released a new version of its most powerful artificial intelligence model, Opus 4.1.
College applications rise outside US as Trump cracks down on international students - Sylvia Hui, AP
In China, wait times for U.S. visa interviews are so long that some students have given up. Universities in Hong Kong are fielding transfer inquiries from foreign students in the U.S., and international applications for British undergraduate programs have surged. President Donald Trump’s administration has been pressuring U.S. colleges to reduce their dependence on international enrollment while adding new layers of scrutiny for foreign students as part of its crackdown on immigration. The U.S. government has sought to deport foreign students for participating in pro-Palestinian activism.
Friday, August 15, 2025
OpenAI says they are no longer optimizing ChatGPT to keep you chatting — here’s why - Amanda Caswell, Tom's Guide
With over 180.5 million monthly active users and nearly 2.5 billion prompts per day, OpenAI recently revealed it is optimizing ChatGPT to help, not hook. In a new blog post titled “What we’re optimizing ChatGPT for,” OpenAI revealed it’s moving away from traditional engagement metrics like time spent chatting. Instead, the company says it’s now prioritizing user satisfaction, task completion and overall usefulness. This is an unconventional stance, as apps like TikTok, Meta, and similar Silicon Valley companies strive to keep users tied to their screens.
The Precision Learning Companion - There Is An AI For That (TAAFT) Notion Site
This prompt turns AI into an ultra-detailed, dynamic personal tutor that doesn’t just quiz, it teaches deeply, layer by layer, until the user genuinely masters the material. It’s built to adapt in real time, constantly diagnosing knowledge gaps, and never moving forward without full comprehension. Every answer, right or wrong, triggers a structured, narrative-style breakdown explaining the what, why, how, and broader context, ensuring true understanding. The AI is designed to feel like having a supportive but meticulous mentor who scaffolds learning: progressively challenging the user if they perform well, slowing down and simplifying if they struggle, and always reinforcing psychological safety through encouragement. It uses textually described visual aids, memory tricks, real-world examples, and step-by-step remediation when needed. Mastery, not speed, is the goal.
OpenAI, Google and Anthropic Win US Approval for Civilian AI Contracts - Bloomberg
The US government’s central purchasing arm is adding OpenAI, Alphabet Inc.’s Google and Anthropic to a list of approved artificial intelligence vendors, opening the door to widespread adoption of the technology across civilian federal agencies. The move by the General Services Administration, to be announced Tuesday, will speed up the adoption of AI tools in the federal government by making them available through its Multiple Award Schedule, a federal contracting platform with contract terms already set. Without that flexibility, agencies would ordinarily spend months negotiating their own terms for use of the technology. GSA officials said the models from the three companies — OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini and Anthropic’s Claude — were evaluated by several performance and security measures.
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