In this University Business article, Stan Novak, Senior Market Analyst and Interdepartmental Liaison at CollegeSource, warns against the temptation in higher education to prioritize artificial intelligence (AI)-powered solutions. This is especially important when addressing the widening equity gaps in a post-pandemic world, which faces the triple scarcities of under-enrollment, under-staffing, and under-funding. The diversity-equity-inclusion (DEI) problem—and its solution—is ultimately a human one. Endlessly tweaking the AI toolset to remove bias not only fails to address the problem at its source, but it generally does not give a good ROI. Overcommitment to AI drains resources from more traditional and direct solutions for inequity in transfer and completion outcomes, such as: increasing the advisor-to-student ratio, standardizing the creation of course-to-course equivalencies, and building a DEI-oriented culture among those who create and use those AI-powered tools—by conducting traditional diversity training.
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