I’m A Professor. I No Longer Know What My Job Is.

Slowly, hesitantly, I’ve let the thought creep into my consciousness: what if AI is better than me at my job?

I don’t think I’m about to lose my job (I’m a tenured professor, after all), and neither will you. But I have to wonder if maybe, just maybe, I need to rethink what my job really is.

You see, I have embraced AI in my teaching, working hard to get my students to use it in academically legitimate ways: as a daily tutor and Socratic dialogue partner rather than solely for cheating as their “ghost writer.” So I was proud to read this comment in one of my students’ reflections at the beginning of this semester: “I didn’t really understand what my professor was lecturing about, so I asked ChatGPT.” Here was proof, I told myself, that my students were, in fact, turning to AI to deepen their critical thinking, being engaged learners even in a large class.

But now, after reading a dozen or so such comments over the last two months, I’m worried. You see, I pride myself on being a dynamic lecturer. I’ve won teaching awards, consistently receive high end-of-semester evaluations, and have had countless students over my career come up after class to thank me for the lecture. 

Yet here was student after student telling me they found AI far more helpful in learning the content I was supposedly teaching them. I take seriously my role of guiding students in their intellectual journeys (what’s formally known as a cognitive apprenticeship), especially as I teach complex and contested issues (e.g., race is a “social construct”; the implications of generational poverty) in a required general education course. I put a lot of effort into my lectures – drawing on a wide array of literature, real-world examples, mini case studies, videos, and online resources – and spend substantial time reading and responding to students’ reflections after every class.

But here’s the thing. I have 74 students this semester in this course. Some are honors students, while others are failing. Some are White, while others are Black, Asian, and Hispanic. Some are engineering majors, while others are in education, business, or health science. Some have heard these ideas before, while others resist or refuse to accept them. There is, therefore, literally no way for me to personalize my teaching for every student. But AI does it effortlessly, immediately, and accurately. With the right prompts, it adapts its explanations to their level of understanding, provides example after example, listens to and clarifies students’ misconceptions, and points them to places where they can read more about it, again based on their own areas of interest or understanding. It does this patiently, persuasively, and at any time of the day or night when a student finally decides to engage with it. 

And here’s what’s even worse: at some point, as I’m reading and responding to and grading those 74 reflections, I get tired. (This is known as cognitive fatigue.) My skimming becomes faster, my responses get shorter, and, yes, my grades may get higher as I finally get to reflections by students whose last names start with a W, X, Y, or Z. But AI never gets tired. With the right prompts, its responses are always sharp, always aligned to the rubric, always friendly and professional. 

So, dear reader, I’ll admit it. I’m scared. I’m scared that after twenty years of mastering my craft, I’m just not good enough.

In organizational psychology, this is known as an “identity threat.” When individuals’ professional livelihoods are threatened, people respond in one of two ways: either by trying to protect or restructure their identities. The former, the recalcitrant among us, stubbornly pretend that AI is a passing fad. The latter, the hopeful among us, naively proclaim that we can restructure our way out of this by claiming that “The age of AI does not diminish the faculty member's role; it expands and elevates it.”

I am sorry to tell you that both are wrong.

They are both wrong because the fundamental pedagogical structure of higher education – the transmission model of education – is imploding. Copernicus helped us envision a universe where we were no longer at the center. AI is now doing the same thing, showing us how learning, rather than the professor, can be at the center of the classroom. 

For now, we only see this disruption at the margins (e.g., community colleges, for-profit institutions, online programs), as everything from tutoring to teaching assistants to grading is being outsourced to AI agents. But trust me, “proof of concept” examples are popping up every day at institutions just like yours.

It is thus a dagger to my heart to admit that my ultimate goal as an educator – helping my students understand the concepts I teach – may actually happen better without me. And if that is true, then the next question all of us must ask is far more unsettling: what exactly is my job?