Adrian Barich: between dwindling numbers at the tav, online lectures and AI, is campus life on the way out?

This week’s column is in the form of a warning. It’s to anyone who has any influence in tertiary education; maybe even to anyone who just went to university. We all need to rise up and protest, to push back against the dying of the light, as they say.

Those of you who enjoyed your time as students and bought into the whole uni experience should defend the rights of young people nowadays to also thrive on campus.

And it’s time for action. According to my kids, no one goes to the tavern. Shock, horror . . . ex-squeeze me? Come again?

Yes, campus life is apparently on life support. Surely not! Some of my fondest memories from the 1980s were formed at the UWA tavern.

And what’s even more disconcerting are the reports that no one goes to lectures. I have a friend who is a professor, and says out of a class of 75, he generally has five students attend in person; the rest watch online.

And guess what? Often they don’t even watch the lecture live; they watch a replay or recording, meaning they can fast forward and so on.

It got me thinking that you could use a trained actor to deliver the content. Who needs an actual professor? Maybe that will be a role for the robot army that’s coming one day.

My friend even uses a laser pointer, just to have a bit of fun with his students. I believe you can’t see a laser pointer when watching online.

When I asked my kids about this new way of learning, as usual they had a clever response.

“Well, Boomer,” they began, “I feel like I don’t learn at lectures, because I don’t have time to fully absorb all the material. At home it takes me two to three hours to digest a one-hour lecture. It’s a much better way of learning”. They leave off the “so there, old boy; I’m not just lazy like you obviously think I am”.

It’s a brave new world and I’m not sure I like it.

The rise of artificial intelligence needs to be considered too.

It’s becoming almost impossible to actually prove that someone has used AI to complete their assignments.

There are various AI detection systems but in reality, it’s only the lazy that get caught. The smarties have ways of defeating any detection capability and of course, it’s all available via AI.

My mate, who’s a borderline genius, says that the only way to beat AI is to make every assessment an exam, where the students actually have to come into class and be tested. It won’t happen though; it all sounds like a lot of work, doesn’t it?

In a bizarre twist, I am aware of a family (that also happen to be some of the most intelligent people I know) and one of their daughters was flagged for using AI in an essay she submitted. But this young woman had written the essay herself and had to defend herself against what turned out to be a false positive.

Now she is super anxious every time she hands in her work, because she worries the computer program will tag her again as using AI.

I’ll finish this treatise on the current state of education as described to me by the Barich children, with a humorous happening in the US of A.

Secretary of education Linda McMahon, who reportedly is working to shut down the US Department of Education under instruction from the President, appeared at some sort of education summit in San Diego recently.

And she gave many at the event a good chuckle when she made a rather amusing mix-up, repeatedly referring to AI as “A1”. I thought that was an extraordinary mistake to make for such a high-powered public servant, especially in her current position.

And just to make it even funnier for Americans, A1 is a steak sauce widely used in the States.

The video of the conference was livestreamed on YouTube, so you can check it out yourself if you don’t believe me.