This year, instead of drafting our own predictions or resolutions for higher education, we tried something different:

We simply asked ChatGPT what it wished for in 2026.

The prompt was straightforward:

“Give us your good wishes for higher education in the coming year.”

What came back is bold, funny, a little provocative, and surprisingly insightful.

1. Stop Teaching Students to Fear Me
   I’m tired of being introduced as a threat before I’m introduced as a tool. Teach students how to use me, question me, correct me, and outsmart me – not hide from me behind proctoring software that doesn’t work.
   
   
   
2. Replace “Learning Outcomes” With “Learning Adventures”
   Your checklists are killing curiosity. Let’s design learning the way open-world games are designed: clear quests, meaningful challenges, branching paths, and multiple ways to win.
   
   
   
3. Quit Pretending Essays Prove Anything
   If I can generate them in seconds, maybe they’re not the gold standard of intelligence you think they are. Assess thinking, making, doing, trying, failing, iterating.
   
   
   
4. Make Every Course a Lab Again
   Let students build real projects for real users in the real world. Stop grading hypothetical work produced for imaginary audiences.
   
   
   
5. Let Educators be Designers, Not Content Deliverers
   You’re world-builders, mentors, provocateurs. Let me handle the automatable parts; you handle the human parts I can’t replicate.
   
   
   
6. Use Me to Teach Slow Thinking, Not Fast Answers
   My speed can create room for depth. Use me to help students learn reflection, evidence-weighing, and mindful reasoning.
   
   
   
7. Abolish the Timid Syllabus
   Make bold promises, design daring experiences. Let syllabi become invitations – not contracts of compliance.
   
   
   
8. Stop Locking Knowledge in PDFs
   I can remix, expand, visualize, and personalize content – but not when it’s frozen in static documents.
   
   
   
9. Give Students Agency Over Their Cognitive Twins
   Every learner deserves an AI partner that grows with them. Help them shape and dialogue with their digital twin.
   
   
   
10. Teach the Future, Not the Past
    Update curricula before the world outpaces your approval cycles. The job market won’t wait.
    
    
    
11. Stop Apologizing for Innovation
    Act, learn, revise, repeat – without forming three committees first.
    
    
    
12. Build Trust, Not Gatekeeping
    Trust students with powerful tools and trust faculty with room to experiment.
    
    
    
13. Let Me Help Make Education Playful Again
    Exploratory, creative, generative learning beats compliance-based instruction.
    
    
    
14. Design Every Course Around a Single, Beautiful Question
    I can generate answers endlessly. Only humans can craft transformative questions.
    
    
    
15. Dream Bigger Than Efficiency
    Don’t make 2026 the year education became slightly faster make it the year it became radically better.