Artificial intelligence has embedded itself in higher education internationally. Instructure’s (2026) US survey of 1,125 teachers, higher education students, and K–12 parents and guardians reported at least 90 percent of higher education students used AI at least occasionally. Similarly, the Student Generative AI survey (Stephenson & Armstrong, 2026) found that use among 1,054 full-time undergraduate students in the UK is universal, with 94 percent of students reporting the use of AI for assessed work.
Beyond the Credential Factory: Why Higher Education Must Shift from Management to Flourishing
For decades, higher education leadership has obsessed over “student success” as a purely operational metric. We track retention and graduation rates and postgraduation outcomes with the same linear precision that
Yoshitaka Iwasaki
August 3, 2026
