AI’s Dress Rehearsal

The Classroom Before the Curtain Rises

AI in higher education is under fire—outsourced essays, lazy thinking, and originality gasping for air. Calm down. This isn’t the end; it’s the beginning. The warm-up act before the main event: when AI-native students hit the workplace and rewrite the rules.

Today’s students don’t just use AI—they breathe it. While professors debate ethics, students are automating workflows, drafting ideas, and treating AI like a default setting. It’s not a crutch; it’s a catalyst.

Critics cry foul, claiming AI kills 'real learning.' Maybe the problem isn’t AI. Maybe it’s the old idea that memorization equals knowledge. The real metric? Doing—testing, tweaking, and applying insights in real time. Higher ed’s dirty little secret? The problem isn’t AI—it’s grading. Assessments built for the pre-AI world are buckling. Instead of banning AI, let’s rebuild how we evaluate learning.

What should we actually teach with AI? Volume—how to brainstorm and generate ideas quickly. Testing—how to run agile experiments and iterate fast. Variety—how to work through multiple scenarios at once. Validation—how to question results, catch errors, and call out AI hallucinations. Depth—how to push insights further than ever before. This isn’t busywork; it’s the new curriculum.

The divide is stark—students treat AI like muscle memory, while employees are still flipping through the manual.

This incoming workforce will make a lot of people nervous. If you’re not already testing AI tools, you’re behind. Hiring based on résumés stuffed with manual skills? That’s a bet on yesterday’s world.

This generation moves fast, fails faster, and doesn’t blink when they pivot. They’re fluent in asking better questions, testing bigger ideas, and breaking things to see what sticks. Companies that let them run wild? They’ll own the future.

AI in classrooms isn’t the revolution. It’s the soundcheck. The real disruption hits when these students trade caps and gowns for office chairs. Think the AI debate is loud now? You haven’t heard anything yet.