Tyler Austin Harper

@Tyler_A_Harper Good point, but don’t forget, outside of elite spaces, but even there, faculty have been greatly diminished. Over the last 8 years, my college lost 7 English professors, and they replaced them with adjuncts, who now teach 95% of our English I sections—too few FT l 124 views · 1 likes · 0 reposts · 0 replies Open on X →

It’s good that a few colleges are getting around to enacting safeguards that it was blindingly obvious were necessary from day 1. But the fact that it took this long makes it clear that these institutions are already dead in spirt though they’ll surely continue on in zombie form. 17.6K views · 207 likes · 1 reposts · 8 replies Open on X →

ChatGPT dropped 4 years ago and it’s hard to point to ONE college that has undertaken sweeping overhauls to fight AI. The ugly reality is that colleges are zombie institutions whose educational mission is long abandoned, nihilistically groaning forward thanks only to inertia. 5/ 33.1K views · 310 likes · 18 reposts · 6 replies Open on X →

Of the many reasons I have doubts that higher ed can be saved, the biggest is that it couldn’t even be mustered to its own defense when confronted with the gravest threat in its history. Faculty failed to organize against AI on campus and admins can’t welcome it fast enough. 4/ 25.2K views · 274 likes · 13 reposts · 6 replies Open on X →

COVID proved colleges can move with alacrity and ingenuity to confront new threats when the endowment is in peril, or when they may have to refund room & board. But they have collectively yawned in the face of a machine that has turned education itself into an expensive farce. 3/ 26.4K views · 326 likes · 12 reposts · 2 replies Open on X →

Colleges around the country treated COVID like an existential threat to their business model and swiftly mobilized vast resources and new policies to fight it. When AI—an existential threat to their EDUCATIONAL model—arrived, they did nothing because it didn’t touch the money. 2/ 29.3K views · 472 likes · 17 reposts · 5 replies Open on X →

The most black-pilling part of my run as a professor was watching the same colleges that had rightly moved heaven and earth to ensure they could keep students on campus during the pandemic—and thus keep cashing sweet, sweet room and board checks—do literally nothing about AI. 1/ 396.5K views · 1.8K likes · 92 reposts · 34 replies Open on X →

@Tyler_A_Harper God forbid students should be compelled to demonstrate their trustworthiness to their teachers. 596 views · 24 likes · 0 reposts · 0 replies Open on X →

Here's the relevant portion of the dean's email: https://t.co/z5iP3zyWL8 30.4K views · 217 likes · 12 reposts · 21 replies Open on X →

@Tyler_A_Harper Call me a dinosaur if you must, but this is utterly depressing. 2.5K views · 70 likes · 0 reposts · 0 replies Open on X →

Insisting students do their own thinking and writing is super carceral if you think about it. Encouraging AI is harm reduction! 6.5K views · 220 likes · 6 reposts · 11 replies Open on X →

Here’s the relevant part of the Harvard dean’s email, in which he suggests (“modestly”) that professors teaching writing intensive courses should encourage AI use. And of course this gets dressed up in woke moralizing about policing students and damaging “trust.” End times stuff. 208.6K views · 661 likes · 113 reposts · 75 replies Open on X →

This is the game plan everywhere. From Harvard on down. And if faculty continue to remain in denial, fail to organize in the defense of their profession, and can't grow a spine and throw down a gauntlet over this, at a certain point you have to conclude they have made their bed. 16.2K views · 357 likes · 21 reposts · 7 replies Open on X →

Harvard didn't even wait 2 months after the shuttering of the writing center to throw their official talking points—"oh this isn't about de-valuing writing!"—straight into the trash can. Mere weeks later, the dean announces that AI use should be encouraged in writing courses. 3/ 16.1K views · 361 likes · 17 reposts · 3 replies Open on X →

Last month I reported on Harvard's shuttered writing center. The official line was that the closing of the center was not about de-valuing writing. Now Harvard's dean—David Deming—is calling for "AI acceptance or even encouragement" in writing courses. 1/ https://t.co/SKnNTSYeVg 270.1K views · 777 likes · 141 reposts · 40 replies Open on X →

@Tyler_A_Harper See, I actually foresee the opposite. It’s going to be working class families that send their kids to school less. Upper middle class views college as much as status as economics, and the competition for those students will get fierce. Young Adult Luxury Camps wil 384 views · 10 likes · 0 reposts · 1 replies Open on X →

@Tyler_A_Harper My guess is that this will be a shift towards public flagship colleges, away from all but the most elite private liberal arts schools. It doesn't cost 100k to put multiple kids through Auburn or LSU (esp because these schools throw scholarship money at students). 10.8K views · 316 likes · 4 reposts · 13 replies Open on X →

This seems right. If you’re a parent with kids in the near-college age, it likely seems risky to not send your kids to college. But it ALSO seems risky to bet that $75-100k tuition will payoff. So I imagine a lot of people will hedge and go state school. https://t.co/EKGIzT782B 63.8K views · 558 likes · 12 reposts · 49 replies Open on X →

@Tyler_A_Harper Seems possible the first stage is an uptick in public / in-state applications, due to the massive cost difference from private. It’s already happening in California, although due to the quality of the schools, not AI. 67.8K views · 105 likes · 3 reposts · 3 replies Open on X →

It feels impossible to imagine a massive and sudden rollback in the number of kids attending college. But it feels even more impossible to imagine parents continuing to pay for THIS. So I think you have to at least take seriously the possibility that the wheels fall off rapidly. 92.9K views · 540 likes · 12 reposts · 16 replies Open on X →

The trajectory is not sustainable, even in the near to mid-term. I just don’t see a world in which parents continue to indefinitely fork up nearly half a million to send their kids to AI Cheating Young Adult Luxury Camp. Some will, but how many? Enough to sustain most colleges? 75.4K views · 920 likes · 39 reposts · 21 replies Open on X →

It feels to me that colleges are playing a risky game of chicken with parents. The wager seems to be that college is so entrenched as the default that parents will continue to pay for it even as the value proposition and quality collapse due to AI. I think that bluff gets called. 110.2K views · 1K likes · 24 reposts · 22 replies Open on X →

People are under-pricing the possibility of a black-swan-esque event where significant chunks of higher ed collapse suddenly. At some point parents will decide they will not pay $100-400k combined for their kids to cheat their way through college. I expect a bang, not a whimper. 1.8M views · 6.8K likes · 504 reposts · 429 replies Open on X →

Higher ed has been contracting for a decade. Depending on how you count, around 100 or more four-year institutions have closed in that time. The closures and mergers are likely to accelerate in the next ten years. A range of 2-300 more seems very possible. https://t.co/9hIsiHYBtV 498.6K views · 841 likes · 78 reposts · 39 replies Open on X →

Tyler Austin Harper@Tyler_A_Harper29 Aug

I was on NPR recently talking about higher ed and one thing I said and deeply believe is that 95% of college athletic programs have no reason to exist. They’re a huge money suck, yet we have been brainwashed into acting as if playing sports in college is a sacred human right. 1.6M views · 20.1K likes · 1.4K reposts · 985 replies Open on X →

Tyler Austin Harper@Tyler_A_Harper20 Aug

@Tyler_A_Harper I’m glad you’re covering this story, but I take issue with your suggestion that having a writing center is a marker of (or was, by your logic) an elite institution. The history of writing centers, which goes back to the 1930s, is worth noting bc we see them emerge 271 views · 6 likes · 0 reposts · 0 replies Open on X →

@Tyler_A_Harper As a Comp Lit guy, you must share my dismay at seeing language programs (and the literature in them) being cut on the grounds that Duolinguo or AI-translation can cover it instead. Apocalyptic indeed! 922 views · 12 likes · 0 reposts · 1 replies Open on X →

@Tyler_A_Harper To write clearly, you need to think clearly. You need to value the process. And you need to believe it's worth the hard work. Better grades. Better jobs. Sadly, none of that holds today. 220 views · 7 likes · 1 reposts · 0 replies Open on X →

I wrote about the closing of Harvard’s writing center in the middle of the AI apocalypse. Some see the center’s fate as Harvard capitulating to the robots, others as cutting admin bloat. Whatever the truth, it provides permission for non-elite, poorer schools to do the same. http

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