What It Takes to Lead a College Through the AI Shift

Jenny Maxwell, Head of Education at Superhuman, sat down with Timothy Moore, President of Indian River State College, to talk about what it takes to lead a college through this AI moment. Their lightly edited conversation is below.

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Why AI is reshaping higher education

What's the most consequential shift happening between AI and higher education right now?

Timothy Moore: AI is accelerating the transfer of knowledge to human beings and outpacing the traditional academy's delivery mechanism. Students are starting to ask, "Why am I in an academy when I can get the same knowledge, or better, from the AI ecosystem?" I'll be honest with you: we're teaching mid-nineteenth-century content in the twenty-first century, using a method developed four hundred years ago. I don't think it's relevant in today's marketplace.

We've got to train our students to use this technology: to authenticate what they find, separate wheat from chaff and fact from fiction, and apply it. Education is the acquisition of facts, combined with experience, to create knowledge that solves problems. AI will accelerate that sequence of events.

Jenny Maxwell: On the industry side, we’re starting to see the critical mass of educational institutions—the people who were sort of kicking the can—is finally ready to engage with the challenge and opportunity around AI. For years, it was the first-movers who were jumping on AI adoption; now, we are seeing a coalition of the willing emerge, those who had been reluctant to engage, get on board.

Because that middle is such a large subset of the market, they're willing to make demands of the companies building these AI tools (and they should) so what comes to market feels less like the Wild Wild West than it has been. We're starting to move the boulder in the right direction.

What does all of this mean for what a degree actually stands for?

Maxwell: Industry and the value of expertly trained workers are going to put pressure on institutions. That's the whole value prop of education. Sixty years ago, people may have gone to college to find themselves; now, we're trying to feed our families and achieve economic mobility. Job readiness is going to force education to adopt AI faster, and I think we'll start to break apart the four-year-degree model, with alternatives like trade schools making a comeback.

Moore: We put too much emphasis on one aspect of a degree: take the test, make the A. Making the A doesn't mean you're smart; it means you can replicate what the professor wants. But speaking, writing, and the conveyance of ideas are going to happen at speeds we've never seen. The ability of a student to have that voice and take their innovation to market is what counts, and that is what we want a degree to signify.

You can't do it alone, or all at once

A college and an AI company are fundamentally different animals. What makes a partnership between them work?

Moore: We've got to recognize that we are not the other. A company has a totally different mindset, focused on the bottom line; a college must focus on its core mission of educating and uplifting individuals. Know what you are, and stay in the lane you're good at.

What I've always found fascinating is the interface of dissimilar partners—that electron cloud, where the electrons begin to overlap, is where the magic happens. The key is leadership on each side, not taking the other for granted. The AI companies get better because they're working with us. The college gets better because we're working with industry. And the ultimate beneficiaries are our students.

What I'm looking for as AI comes into the college is that we learn a more entrepreneurial, less risk-averse approach than higher education is known for. We've got to get away from the sloth-like speed at which we solve problems, or we'll be largely irrelevant to the market and the mission and populations we serve.

Maxwell: That overlap is where we come in, and it works as a trade. We bring teams who can prototype, ideate, and create concepts, something higher education isn't set up to do quickly, because its job is to serve students. What we owe in return is patience: the curiosity to listen to what educators need, because they're sitting so close to the student.

That frontline expertise often gets steamrolled by companies that don't understand its value, and then they go to market and education says, "Sorry, you missed the mark." What a real partnership unlocks are tools that aren't just valuable; they actually get used. It reduces the technical debt of the education vertical, where so much gets bought on a promise that was never vetted.

AI touches everything at once. How do leaders get aligned, and stay aligned, on where to focus?

Maxwell: Everyone's busy, so they default to their strategic plan. But at the core, you have to be aligned on your mission and recommit regularly—not every five years, but often enough that it’s still at the top of everyone’s mind. The priority list in higher ed is often 20 things deep. How do you determine what's the most important? It takes ruthless prioritization: pick the one thing that, if you fix it, you could build a framework around and repeat.

Moore: It takes talking to smart people, curiosity, imagination, and a vision. You've got to read and understand what's at hand. Curiosity is the key: when you understand something, you're no longer afraid of it; you're fascinated by it. Decision-making is usually predicated on 30, maybe 40, percent target resolution, and the rest is intuition; you go forward, and if you fail, you redirect. Academics want to be perfect, and perfect doesn't exist here. Don't let perfect be the enemy of better.

Show your work, and unlock every student’s potential

What does it take to go from experimenting with AI to becoming a model others follow?

Moore: Founders and early adopters are always ridiculed, shunned, and questioned. But the academy wasn't built by people who were compliant; it was built by people who pushed, evolved, and created new fields. Early adoption puts us on the leadership edge: the chance to fail early, learn, and transmit that knowledge to institutions that can pick up the ball and go.

Maxwell: The most AI-forward institution is a title the market gives you—you don't have to say it about yourself. Claiming you're the best AI institution in the world is subjective, and people will poke holes in your evidence. The school that earns that title isn't the one telling everybody who they are; they're showing it, doing the work.

What do you believe AI can unlock for students that we're only starting to see?

Maxwell: My conviction has never been higher. I think about my time at UCLA and what I could have done with an always-on tutor who actually knew me, who could train me, prep me, push my thinking so I'm ready for that A in biochemistry. But it has to be personalized. AI can be a great equalizer: it can test you in your native language and make sure your English is up to speed for your board exams. That's what this can change, as long as it stays trusted and as seamless as the tools people already use.

Moore: I don't think we've tapped into the evolving brain of our most recent generations. They're highly digitally adaptive. We've got to give them shorter, more concentrated bursts of information so they can assimilate it, succeed, and apply it. Most people misunderstand AI as cheating. And it can be the “easy” button. Ask it to write your term paper, and you'll get a beautiful paper on a Shakespearean sonnet and learn nothing. Use it properly, and you actually learn: structure, thought process, ideation. Then you find: I can do this. We're trying to get better every day, and AI gives us and our students the launch capability to do exactly that.