Increasingly, college students are outsourcing their schoolwork to artificial intelligence. This development is troubling for college educators everywhere, but especially for those of us working at church-related liberal arts institutions. Many of us believe that higher order thinking is not merely a marker of our humanity but the mark of our Maker. We hold that reasoning, like loving, is something God made us to do. We reason to learn the truths of Creation and to see ourselves as beings created in the divine image. When we ponder mysteries and solve problems, we act in accordance with our higher purpose. Conversely, when we too readily substitute artificial intelligence for our own, we compromise our callings. Generative AI can aggregate information, but it can tell us nothing about our souls. As philosopher Lily Abadal points out, only you can search your heart. Indeed, as the Catholic Church’s recent doctrinal note reiterates, what distinguishes human intelligence from AI is “the person’s openness to the ultimate questions of life.”
How can we encourage our students and our institutions to stay true to their callings in an age of artificial intelligence? It starts with restoring faith. Students need faith in themselves and in their instructors’ expertise. Faculty need faith in their students’ capacity to learn and their own capacity to teach them. In some of our institutional contexts, we need faith that God gave humanity reason for a purpose—namely to grow spiritually as we grow in wisdom together. What we often miss in the daily round of lectures, quizzes, exams, and assignments is that the classroom ought to be a sanctuary, not a workplace. When we enter, we step out of the world and into a sacred space. It is made holy by what we do there: seeking the truths which lie within and beyond ourselves.
The worth of that enterprise has lately come under suspicion. Polling indicates public confidence in the value of college is declining, especially as tuition costs rise even as millions of young people are still investing vast sums in higher education. But, as critics like San Francisco State University professor Ronald Purser warn, the indiscriminate adoption of AI (by both students and institutions) risks making the college experience more about gaming a system than participating in a program of intellectual and moral formation. Faculty members, meanwhile, have doubts of their own. A recent study from the American Association of Colleges and Universities and Elon University finds that widespread undergraduate use of generative AI has led most college instructors to fear for their students’ critical thinking skills, attention spans, and career readiness.
In this age of high-tech workarounds and hacks, how do we make the case that liberal education is worth the effort? We have our work cut out for us. Everyone loves things made easy, and AI tantalizes with the prospect of life without friction. We must make the case that difficulties can be desirable. Adversity is the best education—it refines our skills and strengthens our character. Everyone knows that personal growth is impossible without struggle. Ask any student about their proudest achievement; it is never something that came easily! So, how do we get students to show the same grit and take the same pride in their studies? How do we persuade them to embrace our liberal arts missions more fully? How do we convince them to invest their whole selves in their education, and not just their money?
If we were only preparing them for a profession, we might struggle to make a compelling case against shortcuts, given how the market rewards efficiency. But at liberal arts institutions, we are preparing students for lives of meaning. And at religiously affiliated institutions, we want them to see themselves not only as employers will see them, nor perhaps as they currently see themselves, but as God sees them—beloved children endowed with reason and destined for a higher purpose. This is why we esteem academic honesty; we speak and act for ourselves because we know that we are each created enough. Left unchecked or used uncritically, AI conditions us to doubt the worth of our reason. It preys on distraction, disinterest, or worst, a feeling of deficiency, of not-enough-ness. And it reinforces the fallacy that college is about producing outputs, when liberal education should be about examining and refining the self.
Vocation can be the antidote to the apathy and alienation that artificial intelligence engenders. Students put faith in liberal education when it supports their pursuit of self-discovery. Articulating our values in light of our upbringings, interrogating our goals in response to our experiences, being accompanied and accompanying others on the way—these are the habits that give meaning to life. Every student comes to us with a lifetime’s worth of triumphs and regrets, qualms and questions. These only grow over the four years they spend with us. Incorporated into classroom instruction, these experiences can impart a sense of purpose. The work of self-reflection, alone or with others, affirms our humanity and liberates our minds in a way that AI does not and cannot. “AI tools promise much,” psychologist Richard Lopez writes, “But, we must take care to preserve and enhance ways of being that make us human in the first place.”
We need to find ways—curricular, co-curricular, and extracurricular—to habituate students to pausing and pondering the truths of their lives. In our fast-paced, hyperconnected world, stillness and contemplation can feel uncomfortable. But if we do not accustom students to the practice, there are few other settings left for them to learn it. And what is liberal education for, after all? It should encourage introspection because it is, by nature, reasoned and reflexive. Liberal education is not merely about the acquisition or production of knowledge; instead, it is a process of inquiry that invites us to learn more about ourselves as we learn about the world. In this way, students are both informed by their education and formed by it. Our mission is to give them tools to search for meaning and to shape their souls. If we are not explicit and intentional about these aims, if we do not incentivize students to look inward, to set goals, and to seek mentoring, AI will fill the void. With its putative panaceas, it will make the education we espouse seem quaint, obsolete, and hack-worthy.
It’s been said that there is opportunity amid every crisis. The rise of artificial intelligence is a chance for liberal arts institutions of all types to renew their commitments to vocation. The search for meaning must be the centerpiece of the education we provide. It is our purpose to help students to pursue theirs, however challenging that might be for each party. The discernment of one’s callings should not be the happy accident of four years of study but the hallmark of an undergraduate education—four years spent in careful reflection and loving community.
John Frederick Bell is an associate professor of history at Assumption University, where he recently received the Michael O’Shea Presidential Award for Excellence in Teaching. A scholar of race, education, and Black freedom, he is the author of the award-winning book Degrees of Equality: Abolitionist Colleges and the Politics of Race. He received his Ph.D. in American Studies from Harvard University and was a Spencer Dissertation Fellow at the National Academy of Education and a Kilachand Postdoctoral Fellow at Boston University. Along with Dr. Rachel Coleman, he is co-curator of the forthcoming Assumption exhibit Living the Mission: Honoring the Overlooked, Inspiring the Future, made possible by a NetVUE “Reframing the Institutional Saga” grant.
