AI Can Generate Answers. Higher Ed Must Develop Thinkers.

Jul 19

By Claire L. Brady, EdD

David Brooks' recent Atlantic essay, The People Who Will Thrive in the AI Age, is one of the most important pieces I've read this year—not because it's about artificial intelligence, but because it's really about human development.

Brooks argues that in a world where intelligence is increasingly abundant, the differentiator won't be IQ. It will be our relationship to mental effort.

That's a profound shift.

For years, higher education has asked whether AI will change what students need to know. Brooks suggests we're asking the wrong question. The more important question may be whether we are helping students become the kind of people who willingly engage with difficult thinking in the first place.

He writes, "When intelligence is plentiful, volition is valuable."

If intelligence is increasingly available on demand, then higher education's role shifts. Our job isn't simply to help students acquire knowledge. It's to cultivate the habits, discipline, intellectual curiosity, and perseverance that lead them to use knowledge wisely. In a world where answers are only a prompt away, the real differentiator becomes the willingness to wrestle with difficult questions rather than simply accepting easy ones.

I haven't stopped thinking about that idea.

If Brooks is right—and I believe he is—then higher education's mission hasn't become less important in the age of AI. It has become more important. The greatest risk isn't that students will use AI. The greatest risk is that they'll stop wrestling with complexity.

Throughout the article, Brooks distinguishes between people who use AI to avoid thinking and those who use it to extend their thinking. He warns that AI can become a shortcut around the very mental effort that builds judgment, creativity, and resilience. He cites research suggesting that frequent reliance on AI may reduce critical thinking, diminish curiosity, and make people more likely to accept incorrect information without questioning it.

As someone who spends much of my time helping colleges and universities integrate AI thoughtfully, I don't read that as an argument against AI. I read it as an argument for better education.

Higher education has never been solely about transferring knowledge. At our best, we cultivate habits of mind. We ask students to analyze, question, synthesize, debate, create, and revise. We teach them to sit with ambiguity long enough to develop their own informed perspectives. Those outcomes matter even more when answers are available instantly.

Brooks makes another observation that should give every educator pause. He contrasts an "optimization mentality," where the goal is to remove friction and maximize efficiency, with what he calls a "cultivation mentality," where growth comes through challenge, effort, and persistence. That distinction feels incredibly relevant for higher education. If every assignment, every reading, every writing task, and every problem can be completed with minimal effort, what exactly are we cultivating?

Learning has always required productive struggle. Not struggle for its own sake. Struggle because it changes us. Students become better writers by wrestling with revisions. Researchers become better scholars by following dead ends before discovering new ideas. Leaders become wiser by making difficult decisions with incomplete information. Those experiences are not inefficiencies to eliminate. They are the work of education.

So what should higher education leaders do?

First, stop framing AI primarily as a productivity tool. Productivity matters, but education has always been about more than output. Design learning experiences that require students to generate ideas before they consult AI, defend their reasoning, reflect on their decisions, and revise their thinking.

Second, invest as much in faculty development as technology. Faculty need support in redesigning assignments, facilitating deeper learning, and using AI to strengthen—not replace—intellectual engagement.

Third, talk openly about why cognitive effort matters. Students understand why athletes train and musicians practice. We should be equally intentional about explaining why thinking is something to strengthen, not outsource.

Finally, resist the temptation to remove every ounce of friction from learning. Some forms of difficulty are obstacles. Others are opportunities. One of higher education's most important responsibilities is knowing the difference.

Near the end of the essay, Brooks reminds us that life "is a pilgrimage, a journey... growing from experience, expanding yourself, reaching for some possibility that you do not yet possess." That is also a beautiful description of higher education. AI will undoubtedly change how we teach, learn, research, and work. It should never change why we exist. Our job is not simply to graduate students who can use AI. Our job is to help graduates who still know how to think.

Read the full article here: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/06/ai-open-ai-anthropic/687689/