Dr. Joseph Crawford unpacks how AI is reshaping higher education - eroding student belonging, redefining assessment in a post-plagiarism era, and raising the stakes for soft skills.

Guest bio
Dr. Joseph “Joey” Crawford is a Senior Lecturer in Management at the University of Tasmania and ranks among the top 1% of most-cited researchers globally. His work centers on leadership, student belonging, and the role of AI in higher education, and he serves as Editor-in-Chief of a leading education journal.

Topics discussed

• AI in higher education and the “post-plagiarism” era
• Student belonging, loneliness, and mental health impacts
• Massification of education (8% → 30% → 50.2% participation)
• Programmatic assessment vs. essays/exams
• COVID-19’s lasting effects on campus culture and learning
• Recorded lectures, flipped learning, and in-person tradeoffs
• Soft skills, leadership education, and employability
• Academic integrity, peer review, and AI misuse by faculty
• Labor shortages, graduate readiness, and industry pathways
• Social anxiety, AI “friendship,” and GPA outcomes

Main points & takeaways

• AI substitutes human support: Heavy chatbot use can provide a sense of social support but correlates with lower belonging and reduced GPA compared to human connections.
• Belonging matters: Human social support predicts higher well-being and better academic performance; AI support does not translate into belonging.
• Post-plagiarism reality: Traditional lecture-plus-essay or multiple-choice assessment is increasingly unreliable for verifying authorship.
• Assessment is shifting: Universities are exploring programmatic assessment—fewer, higher-stakes integrity checks across a degree instead of every course.
• Massification pressures quality: Participation in Australia rose from 8% (1989) to 30% (2020) to 50.2% (2021), straining rigor and prompting curriculum simplification and grade inflation.
• COVID + ChatGPT = double shock: Online habits and interaction anxiety from the pandemic compounded with AI convenience, reducing peer-to-peer engagement.
• Less face time: Many business courses dropped live lectures; students are now ~2 hours less in-class per subject, raising the bar for workshops to build soft skills.
• Workforce mismatch: Employers want communication and leadership; graduates often lack mastery because entry-level “practice” tasks are automated.
• Faculty risks too: Using AI to draft peer reviews can embed weak scholarship into training corpora and distort future models.
• Pragmatic advice: Don’t fear AI—use it—but replace lost micro-interactions with real people and deliberately practice human skills (e.g., leadership, psychology).

Top quotes 

• “We’re in a post-plagiarism world where knowing who wrote what is a real challenge.”
• “Some students are replacing librarians, peers, and support staff with bots—they’re fast, infinitely friendly, and never judge.”
• “AI social support doesn’t create belonging—and that shows up in grades.”
• “The lecture isn’t gone, but in many programs it’s recorded—and students now get less in-person time.”
• “Don’t substitute AI-created efficiency with more work—substitute it with more people.”

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