Future of teaching: Varsities that will succeed are not those that fight AI, but those that ask: what do humans add to learning? — 123rf.com
Every time a new technology enters education, people panic. Calculators were blamed for weakening maths. The Internet was said to ruin memory. Online learning was meant to make universities useless. Now, the fear is artificial intelligence (AI).
But AI will not destroy education. What it will do is expose something many of us already know from experience: some teaching was never very good to begin with.
Most of us remember poor teachers from school or university. The lecturer who read straight from slides. The teacher who repeated the textbook. The lecturer who had not kept up to date.
The class where no one asked questions and the teacher never asked if students understood. We memorised, passed the exams, and forgot most of it soon after. That kind of teaching survived because students had no other option. Sadly, such teachers still exist.
AI changes that. AI can explain ideas clearly, summarise readings, give examples, and answer questions at any time. It does this without embarrassment or judgement. Faced with this, a hard question appears: if AI can explain the content better than a lecturer, why should students sit through the lecture?
The answer is simple: teaching was never meant to be about delivering information. For years, education has confused talking with teaching. Lecturers talk. Slides appear. Students copy notes. Exams reward memory. We all know this routine.
AI is very good at this kind of learning – often clearer and more patient than humans. This does not threaten good teachers. It threatens weak teaching.
Good teachers do much more than share facts. Think of the teachers you still remember. They challenged you. They asked hard questions. They made you explain your thinking. They placed your learning in context. They helped you understand why something mattered.
Good teaching involves judgement, context and care. It helps students deal with uncertainty and complexity. It shows how ideas connect to real life and real consequences. AI cannot easily replace these human roles. But it can reveal when they are missing.
When a lecture is just a spoken textbook, students will stop attending. When exams only test memory, students will use AI to pass them. That is not cheating. It is a predictable response to poor design. The coming of AI is not a crisis for education. It is a wake-up call.
AI forces teachers to stop pretending that content delivery is the same as teaching. It frees them to do what humans do best: guide discussion, design learning, mentor students and give meaningful feedback.
In medicine, this means working through real cases instead of memorising lists. In engineering, designing solutions instead of copying formulas. In business, debating ethical problems instead of memorising models.
AI also exposes weak assessment. Exams that reward memory were already poor tests of learning. AI simply makes that clear. Better assessments test reasoning, judgement, communication, creativity and teamwork – things machines cannot easily replace.
Some institutions have responded by banning AI. This is short-sighted. Students will use AI anyway, just as they used search engines before. Bans protect old habits, not learning. Graduates will enter workplaces where AI is normal. Universities that ignore this reality are not protecting students – they are holding them back.
This moment requires honesty. Some teaching methods are seriously outdated. Some assessments are very poorly designed. Some quality systems reward paperwork instead of learning. Some education is no longer fit for purpose. AI did not create these problems. It exposes them.
The universities that will succeed are not those that fight AI, but those that ask a harder question: what do humans add to learning? The answer is not information. It is judgement, wisdom, empathy and guidance.
As a result, AI will not replace teachers. But it will remove the excuses that allowed bad teaching to survive. And that is something we should all welcome.
Prof Dr David Whitford is vice-chancellor and chief executive of University of Cyberjaya. He earned a doctorate from Cambridge University and has held leadership roles in medical education. With over 70 research publications on disadvantaged communities and quality healthcare delivery, his academic journey includes positions at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, in Dublin and in Bahrain, where he established community-based teaching and led postgraduate studies. The views expressed here are the writer’s own.
