Don’t tell young people to walk away from university. For many, it’s the only way

I’ve spent my career in university classrooms and online learning environments. I’ve watched students arrive uncertain and leave capable, articulate and ready for the world. I’ve seen the moment a first-in-family student realises they belong.

I’ve also spent over a decade dealing with academic misconduct and, more recently, at the centre of what generative AI is doing to higher education.

So yes – the problems being described right now are real. But what concerns me more than cheating is what we are starting to say in response to it.

Kylie Moore-Gilbert wrote in this masthead last week that she had advised her stepdaughter to think twice about going to university. That is advice she is entitled to give. She is right that AI has disrupted how we teach, assess and verify learning. It has.

Where the argument goes wrong is when that personal advice is extended to a generation: wait, opt out, come back later when things have settled. That is not neutral. It risks doing real harm.

Because for many young Australians, university is not an optional extra. It is the only route through to their chosen profession.

If you want to be a nurse, a teacher, an engineer, a social worker then there is no side door. And every year spent waiting is not a holding pattern; it is a year of lost momentum, lost income and delayed entry into a profession. For students without networks or inherited advantage, a degree remains the most reliable lever they have. Advice to “hold off” will not land evenly. It will land hardest on those who can least afford it.

The AI problem is real. No one working seriously in this space is denying that. But the claim that universities are simply cashing cheques and turning a blind eye is not the full picture.

The sector is not standing still. It is in the middle of a significant transformation.

Long before ChatGPT arrived, many of us knew that traditional assessment (take-home tasks, unsupervised online exams) was increasingly vulnerable and, in some cases, no longer doing the job. AI didn’t create that weakness. It exposed it.

What we are now doing, across the sector, is shifting from assessing what students submit to assuring what they actually know, can do and have become.

That means more conversations, more demonstrations, more occasions where students have to show up, and think and do things in real time. It means designing assessment so that learning must reside in the student themselves, not just in the artefact they hand in.

It is not quick. It is not easy. And it is certainly not cheap. But it is happening.

And yes, it also means moving away from some of the practices that proliferated when teaching, learning and assessment were pushed online during the pandemic, remembering that it was a shift made under public health direction rather than as a voluntary experiment in efficiency.

There is another part of this conversation that we need to be honest about.

The people who ultimately assure learning are not institutions in the abstract. They are academic teaching staff. They design the tasks, make the judgements and decide whether a student’s learning meets a standard that justifies progression and graduation.

Across Australia, universities have been increasingly clear: assessment must be designed so that learning can be assured. That responsibility sits with all of us who teach.

Students, for their part, respond rationally to the conditions we create. If it appears possible to get through without doing the work of learning, some will take that path. If assessment signals that the artefact matters more than the capability, then effort will drift toward producing the artefact by any available means.

If we want students to value their own thinking, we must make sure it is required.

This is not about blaming teachers. Nor is it about blaming students. For most students, a degree is the second-biggest investment they will ever make. Universities must treat that seriously. Every hour, every dollar, every expectation placed in that decision carries an obligation to ensure it is worth it.

This is about redesigning a system so that the genuine student learning we say we care about is the only thing that actually counts.

So what should Moore-Gilbert’s stepdaughter hear in all of this? Go to university if you want to. Do the work.

Don’t cut corners. Don’t outsource your thinking, however tempting that may be. If the system is as fragile as some claim, then genuine effort will not be hidden. It will stand out.

You will graduate not just with a credential, but with something far more valuable: knowledge you possess, skills you can exercise and a set of predispositions that have been hard-won.

By all means, hold universities to account. They should be moving faster, and more consistently, than they are. This moment demands it.

But telling young people to sit it out while the system fixes itself is not a solution. For many, it is simply not an option.

Real learning has never been easy. That is precisely why it matters.

And the graduates who do that hard work are exactly the ones we still need.

Professor Cath Ellis is pro vice-chancellor, quality and integrity, at Western Sydney University.