The Next Wave 2025: AI, Accessibility, and the Future of Higher Education

How can universities and librarians meet the technological moment?

Posted on March 10, 2025 in Blog Posts

On February 25, ITHAKA’s annual Next Wave event brought together thought leaders, innovators, and various stakeholders in higher education, libraries, and academic publishing to consider the future of higher education. ITHAKA strives “to improve access to knowledge and education,” and its Next Wave event seeks to advance this mission by exploring different themes each year. This year’s event was particularly notable for being the first live gathering in five years, and the anticipation in the room was palpable.

In their opening remarks, ITHAKA President Kevin Guthrie and higher education futurist Bryan Alexander, the day’s moderator, both noted the challenging moment higher education currently faces. With the day’s overarching theme, “Meet the Moment,” in mind, the panels that followed focused predominantly on how AI is changing the nature of work and its downstream impact on higher education. In light of these shifts, panelists reflected on how educational opportunities can become more accessible to meet the needs of the emerging workforce.

Setting the Stage by Pinpointing the Challenges

To open the day, the first panel, “Defining the Moment,” featured Paul LeBlanc, former president of Southern New Hampshire University; Donna Linderman, senior vice chancellor for student success for the State University of New York; and Doug Lederman, a higher education journalist and analyst and co-founder of Inside Higher Ed. The panelists shared their high-level analyses of the current state of higher education, including both prospects and challenges for how to forge a path forward.

A big focus of the discussion was whether higher education is delivering on its promised outcomes. As the panelists collectively noted, fewer students feel prepared to enter the workforce, and fewer employers are willing to hire new graduates. In fact, in a recent study sponsored by Hult International Business School, 75 percent of HR leaders reported that most college educations do not prepare students to enter the workforce, and over half of new graduates agreed, reporting that their college did not prepare them for work.

LeBlanc contended that much of this relates back to AI, especially as 75 percent of all job seekers expect technology will redefine their jobs, as reported in Indeed’s 2024 Global Future of Work Report. Additionally, in a recent survey from Cengage Group, 70 percent of graduates responded that AI training should be incorporated into college curriculums. Accordingly, institutions must consider which AI tools graduates will need to master to enter the workforce.

Another major challenge is linked to affordability. Linderman added that the rising cost of attending college exacerbates this question of relevance, leading to declining enrollments. Instead, many young adults now seeking advanced educational opportunities, LeBlanc noted, are turning to short-term certificate programs that offer training in a particular skill set. They want something fast, affordable, and specific. While this challenges the existing model of higher education, it also presents an opportunity for the sector to adapt and respond.

As things stand now, it is unclear whether the university today is built for the world to come. So, how should institutions respond in this moment of change? The following three talks featured different AI tools and EdTech organizations seeking to make education more accessible.

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Using AI to Facilitate Accessibility in Higher Education

Opening the conversation on AI tools, Adam Bignell spoke about NotebookLM, an AI-powered research tool developed by Google, for which he serves as lead engineer and co-founder. NotebookLM seeks not to deprive students of their study skills but rather to “lower the struggle threshold,” as Bignell phrased it, by pinpointing the source of its insights so students can engage with their study materials more efficiently. The tool’s “Audio Overview” feature is also noteworthy for generating podcasts to explain the basic concepts of uploaded source material, a boon for people with different learning styles who may struggle with reading.

Next, Joshua Gans, a professor of strategic management at the University of Toronto, presented his AI tool, AllDayTA, which allows professors to upload their course materials to generate customized study content for their students. Sharing the stage with Professor Gans were college sophomores Rudy Arora and Sarthak Dhawan, co-founders of Turbolearn AI, which generates study guides, flashcards, and quizzes from lecture recordings. To assuage concerns of infringing on professors’ intellectual property (i.e., their lectures), Dhawan and Arora assured audience members that Turbolearn does not share transcripts of lecture recordings with students, nor does it save the recordings themselves. They also encourage students to ask permission before recording.

As all these panelists noted, students will use AI tools regardless, so it is imperative that institutions ensure that students learn to use these tools appropriately and that institutions invest in these tools. By doing so, they can maintain guardrails to curb cheating, uphold academic integrity, and better prepare students for employment.

The final tech-focused talk featured two innovative organizations approaching accessibility from different angles: Sylla and Unlocked Labs. Representing Sylla, co-founders Sam Eerdmans and Tom Mosterd discussed how their platform helps libraries find, access, and bookmark open access (OA) content and open educational resources (OERs), saving their staff time and money. They described witnessing how OA content sparks creative thinking among faculty who use it, suggesting the importance of fostering more accessible options for learning.

Representing Unlocked Labs, co-founder Jessica Hicklin spoke about the difficulty incarcerated learners face accessing education. Often, incarcerated people have limited options for college, and states can arbitrarily transfer them out at any point, hindering their educational trajectory. How will formerly incarcerated people reenter the workforce without developing the requisite skills, particularly when a majority do not have a high school diploma and many are illiterate? Recognizing this need for competency-based education and the benefits of a consortia model, Unlocked Labs’s digital platform, UnlockEd, offers online courses to help correctional learners develop skills. To meet students where they are, UnlockEd incorporates a lot of video content and is also trying to leverage AI to help people learn to read.

Looking Forward: Strategic Possibilities for the Future

The day ended with a final panel on strategic possibilities for the future of research, teaching, and learning. The discussion brought together Alicia Salaz, vice provost and university librarian at the University of Oregon; David Prosser, executive director of Research Libraries UK; and Alison Belan, director for strategic innovation and services at Duke University Press.

Touching on one of the day’s major themes, Salaz reasserted that students will be better equipped to enter the workforce if they learn information technology skills. As part of academic libraries’ mission is to educate students, faculty, and staff on information literacy, they must develop courses or modules for AI instruction.

In response to an audience question regarding concern over the growing disconnect between innovations in AI and libraries’ unwillingness to invest in or adopt these tools, Belan championed libraries’ and publishers’ need to keep up with advances in AI or else risk letting private corporations dictate the rules and infrastructures employed, which may not align with the best interests of higher education. On that note, Prosser pointed out that, with the costs of AI development lowering, there may be an opportunity for libraries to take on the development of some AI tools.

Although issues of affordability and accessibility remain, the day’s event elicited many positive ideas for how to meet the moment. Higher education has an opportunity to revitalize its relevance by engaging with AI and recentering accessibility as a cornerstone of its mission.

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