AI in higher ed: just like the shock of the Internet and the web? – Nocode functions - blog – The journey of an academic and app developer

AI in higher ed: just like the shock of the Internet and the web?

July 1, 2026

AI is impacting higher education. What historical frames of reference are useful for imagining the contours of the consequences?

This blog post builds on the accumulation of my postings in the last 4 years on the meanings and consequences of gen AI, right from a note on the significance of ChatGPT when it was released in 2022.

I am interested in a broad question — namely, the impact and consequences of AI on higher ed.<br>This blog post is a short side quest, where I first establish whether AI can be compared to previous tech shocks that impacted higher ed, and how so.<br>Because if AI is “just like MOOCs: vast expectations but limited impact”, then we have learned something interesting: AI is not much to bother about.<br>But that’s not the conclusion I’ll reach ;-)

Before AI, 3 notable tech shocks to higher education

Since 2000, higher ed has had its fair share of shocks that called for urgent adaptation:

The Internet and the web

The web brought digital content production to independent individuals — everyone got a voice and access to a potential worldwide audience.<br>With YouTube, everyone could record a lecture and broadcast it.<br>Learning habits diversified with shorter attention spans, screen-first and mobile-first habits.<br>One question at the time was: would these changes sideline higher education organizations, since knowledge had become available for free, easily and from anywhere?

Big data and data science

Big data and data science opened up the prospect that personalized learning could replace standardized teaching at the group level.<br>Through the analysis of vast quantities of personal data, individual learning paths could be identified.<br>Algorithmically, or through machine learning, the adequate pedagogical resources could be identified to fit each student’s needs, progress rate and aspirations.

MOOCs

MOOCs promised to leverage the first two items (the web and big data) to transform education.<br>The web offers online teaching to a limitless audience, while big data and data science allow learning paths to be individualized, keeping individuals and a tailored pedagogical experience at the center despite massification.<br>A few companies tried to flesh out the promise: Coursera, edX, Udemy, Udacity, Khan Academy, …

The question at the time was: would universities be able to survive if online equivalents existed, available 24/7 and delivering certificates from Ivy League institutions at a fraction of the price and cost of a brick-and-mortar university?

Consequences of these technological shocks: much ado about nothing

I am deliberately painting it in broad strokes:

The Internet and the web left the core of the pedagogical experience surprisingly untouched

When compared to the direct, destructive effects the web continues to have on cultural organizations (the news media, the movie industry, bookstores, …), we can be surprised that higher education remains quite stable and unscathed by the web and the digital economy.

The core experience in higher education remains offline: courses taught by a professor in a classroom to a group of students.<br>Said differently: schools and universities have been transformed by web-era technologies (email, learning management systems, video conferencing, online recruitment systems, etc.), but these have transformed operations more than the basic classroom format.

Even touch-enabled smartboards (when present in a classroom) are used with moderation, in my experience. In sum, the web has been “absorbed” as yet another topic to be dissected in the classroom — rather than transforming the classroom.

Big data and data science have led to the creation of specialized courses and programs

From around 2015 onward, most schools started developing programs offering a crossover between [name a traditional domain] x [big data / data science / analytics], just as they had introduced classes in [digital] x [name a traditional domain] a few years before.<br>This is a consequential change for sure; however, it did not modify the core missions or functions of higher education organizations.

This is quite “normal” and underwhelming compared to expectations about the transformative potential of big data: the promise was that it would make schools capable of designing individual learning paths thanks to data analytics on student data.<br>This promise has not been delivered at the scale once imagined. Learning analytics and adaptive tools exist, but they have not replaced the basic group-based structure of higher education.

MOOC platforms still exist, but schools and universities are fine

Coursera, Udemy, Udacity, edX and Khan Academy are still around, after many difficulties and restructurings.<br>They did not displace higher education organizations by any means, but instead...