ChatGPT-5 is here... universities are entering the endgame

I play a little chess, though I’m no expert. I probably sit somewhere on the spectrum of being able to tell a knight from a bishop and knowing that moving a pawn two spaces on its first turn is legal. But I do like watching a good match. There's something mesmerizing about seeing two opponents across from each other, quietly moving pieces of wood and stone around on a board, their minds working through an unimaginable number of possibilities. They’re thinking about their next move, but also their next five moves, their opponent's next five moves, and what happens when they get to the end of the board and the king is cornered.

The most intense part of a chess match is the end game, when the board is almost empty, and the conclusion is obvious. One player has the advantage, and it's only a matter of a few more moves before the other player is checkmated. Most of the time, the player who knows they've lost will simply concede. They’ll extend a hand across the board, offer a friendly handshake, and walk away. But there are some players who just won't give up. They want to see it through to the final checkmate, holding out hope that maybe, just maybe, their opponent will make a mistake and they’ll find a way to avoid the inevitable.

That’s where we are today with universities and artificial intelligence. The two are at the board, and the end game has arrived. I think it’s pretty clear who has the advantage, and for many universities, the writing is on the wall. But instead of conceding and walking away, they've chosen to stick it out to the bitter end. They're hoping for that one mistake, that one misstep from their opponent that will give them a fighting chance. But the AI isn’t an amateur player. It’s cycling through millions of moves and running every possible scenario, and it will not make a mistake.

It's checkmate in four.

Move 1: Challenge to the credentialing dominance

My students were getting ready to come back for the winter in late 2022 when I first started hearing about ChatGPT. Everyone was talking about it, saying it was going to be a "game-changer" for education. I admit, I was a little skeptical. How good could it really be? But the buzz got to me, and I signed up for an account to see for myself.

It only took a few minutes to realize the hype was real. This thing wasn't just another search engine or a fancy word processor. It was something else entirely. In the almost three years since that first public version, the technology has gotten better in ways that are hard to even wrap your head around. It's not just ChatGPT anymore, either; a whole bunch of other companies jumped into the race, and now AI is everywhere you look. It's in our phones, our cars, and definitely in our classrooms, especially at the university level. It doesn’t look like it’s slowing down anytime soon.

It’s getting to the point where anyone with some time and a real desire to learn can make a schedule and train themselves to a competent level in just about anything, all with the help of AI. The university has always had a monopoly on one thing: the piece of paper that says you’re an expert. The degree. But that might not always be the case. Employers could start to see non-degree credentials as a valid way to show what a person knows how to do. If that happens, and AI can help people earn those kinds of credentials, then the university's main claim to fame is gone. They can’t just be a factory for degrees anymore. The board is set for the next move.

Move 2: The shrinking university

There has been a lot happening in the last few years that has brought on an "age of austerity" for universities. I've seen it firsthand. Schools are doing everything they can just to stay afloat. They've put a freeze on hiring, closed down programs and whole departments, and have even offered early retirement to professors just to cut costs. It feels like they're frantically tossing anything that's not bolted down over the side of the ship, hoping it's enough to keep them from sinking.

This shrinking of the university started well before we had to deal with AI in the classroom. But the new technology is definitely going to speed things up, especially in certain areas. Universities, for better or worse, have come to be run a lot like corporations. And in the corporate world, it's pretty common to use technology to get rid of certain tasks and systems. It’s all in an effort to cut down on staff costs. It’s a move that universities, being run like corporate entities, will also make.

I can just see the next move on the board now. The university, which is playing as the white king, is sacrificing a knight—a whole department—in an effort to stay in the game. But Black’s pawn—AI—is already in a position to take it. The university is hoping that by losing a piece, it will slow down Black's advance. But Black isn't going to be slowed down. The pieces are coming off the board quickly now, and the game is going to get a lot simpler, and a lot more dangerous, for the university.

Move 3: The demographic cliff

I've heard a lot of talk about the sharp drop in birth rates and what that means for different industries down the road. But you don't hear much about what it means for higher education. Universities are in for a rude awakening when they realize that enrollments aren't just down because people are losing faith in them, but because there simply aren't enough students to go around.

Even a small dip in enrollment—say, just five percent—is enough to spell disaster for some schools. Most university boards require a minimum number of students for a course to run. At my school, it's eighteen for undergrad classes and, I think, eight for grad courses. When that number isn't met, the course is cancelled. Multiply that across an entire campus, and you have a real problem.

This drop in student numbers is going to hit smaller programs the hardest, particularly those that were created when universities had plenty of students and money to spare. It will also mean an end to what I think of as "luxury research" — areas of study that, while interesting, don't bring in much funding. As the money dries up, so will these projects. This will have far-reaching effects on the employment of adjunct professors, and graduate teaching assistants; with less students, there are fewer sections of courses to teach, and since tenure track faculty have first dibs on teaching assignments, it simply means institutions will need fewer adjuncts and TAs.

This demographic cliff isn't directly related to AI, but it's a huge issue waiting in the wings. While universities are fixated on their opponent across the board, this quiet threat is moving into position. It's like a pawn that has been advancing steadily across the board, unnoticed by the white king as it scrambles to defend itself from the queen and rook. The board is getting emptier, the options are dwindling, and the final move is just one turn away.

Move 4: The emergence of AGI--checkmate

Many people today are familiar with artificial intelligence, or AI. It's the technology behind the voice assistant on your phone and the recommendation engine on a streaming service. But a lot of those same people have never heard of artificial general intelligence, or AGI. Simply put, AGI is the next phase of AI. Where current systems are trained for specific tasks, AGI would be able to reason, plan, and adapt just like a person, and do so across a wide range of tasks.

When AGI arrives, it will be the final move in the game. It will be the checkmate. Entire fields that once required a university degree to even get your foot in the door will be given over to these autonomous systems. That piece of paper you spent four or more years and a fortune to earn will no longer be the key to a job. The link between a degree and employment will be officially broken.

At that point, the purpose of a university degree will change completely. It will no longer be about getting a job; it will be about intellectual curiosity. Enrollment in most programs will drop to a tiny fraction of what they are now, limited to a few students who are genuinely interested in learning for the sake of it. The population on campus will be much smaller. This will force more programs to close, and eventually entire departments. Ultimately, some universities will be forced to shut their doors for good. Some of them may even convert their physical spaces into data centers, creating a final, ironic twist: generating revenue by providing power for the very thing that led to their demise. The game is over, the king has fallen.

I had a chat just last night with a brother from my lodge, a guy named Matt. We got to talking about what life would look like when a lot of the work we do is taken over by AGI. After all, AGI isn't just a checkmate for universities; it's a checkmate for the very idea of work as we know it.

Matt was more optimistic. He thinks jobs that require a human touch would still be safe. And I agree, but with one major caveat: there just won’t be enough of those jobs for everyone. We're heading for a time of perpetual joblessness, and with it, an existential crisis is waiting for us. What happens when we can't define ourselves by what we do for a living? Can we find purpose and structure in a life of endless free time? It’s either a scary thought or an exciting one, depending on how you look at it. But one thing is for sure: we’re all going to have to face that future one day.