The impact of technological advancements and innovation is rarely a rising tide that lifts all boats. Instead, it can be a current that pulls some far ahead, leaving others behind.
Take the internet, for example: Stanford and UCLA first connected computers on campus to the internet in 1969. However, the internet wasn’t available widely on most campuses until the mid-1990s–and quality high-speed wifi didn’t become widespread until the early 2000s. But even now, access isn’t equal: a history of underfunding means HBCUs haven’t had the luxury of investing in state-of-the-art infrastructure and are still relying on grants to close the digital divide.
AI isn’t a single platform or tool. Like the internet, it’s a technology that will increasingly underpin the platforms or tools used by students, faculty, and administrators every day. The development and dissemination of generative AI tools will accelerate the inclusion of AI as a building block for new technologies. As a result, safeguards are needed to ensure that a new, AI-powered digital divide doesn’t emerge.
The first principle of AI stewardship should be “do no harm”—that is, to ensure that tools don’t lead to disparate, negative impacts on particular groups or entrench existing social biases. While AI stewardship must include mitigating well-known issues like hallucination, algorithmic bias, or privacy and security concerns, it can’t stop there. It must also include building solutions that are accessible, affordable, and that improve outcomes for students and institutions.
HBCUs as a conducive environment for AI…AND its responsible development
HBCUs, despite their incredible track record of supporting social mobility, have faced chronic underfunding—to the tune of 12 billion dollars, according to a study of state funding from the US Department of Education. This underfunding means that HBCUs may be excellent partners for disruptive innovation. HBCUs are underserved by higher ed’s current technology market and offer an environment conducive to adopting new, low-end-of-the-market innovations (i.e., AI).
That doesn’t mean deploying off-the-shelf (or worse, untested) tools at HBCUs: Instead, AI solutions must be developed in partnership with HBCU leaders and students. HBCUs deserve a leadership seat at the table during development of new tools to ensure that solutions are generated that meet their unique needs.
For example, Norfolk State University, an HBCU in Virginia, worked with Mainstay to create an AI-powered chatbot that would feel more authentic to HBCU students. Through a partnership with the Yale School for Emotional Intelligence and catalyzed by support from the Ed Advancement, Norfolk State students worked alongside Mainstay to modify the language used by the chatbot to be more culturally relevant and help reinforce a sense of belonging on campus. Mainstay found that thousands more students responded to these messages after the co-creation process than did to previous reminders.
Creating responsible AI also means making sure tech solutions are accessible to all institutions, especially those that are underfunded. This principle is especially important when institutions co-create these resources, giving their time, energy, and ideas to their creation and development. Still, it shouldn’t stop there—all AI solution developers must prioritize accessibility to avoid a digital divide.
AI can be a crucial lever to streamline and augment university operational processes. For HBCUs as underfunded institutions that often struggle with capacity, enhancing internal efforts can extend their impact as the powerful engines of social mobility and professional success that they already are. The incorporation of AI tools at South Carolina State University, for example, has saved an estimated 400 hours of administrative work for South Carolina State staff. But AI isn’t always the answer. Both solution developers and purchasers must realistically assess whether AI is replacing other, more effective, and/or less expensive options.
To make good on Disruptive Innovation’s promise, AI-powered solutions must take steps to ensure they’re not further entrenching existing barriers to opportunity. But we can’t stop there–thoughtful design and accessibility are equally important to ensuring that AI becomes a useful tool for all institutions. Partnership with HBCUs, themselves historic engines of social mobility, is central to these goals.
Note: This blog includes content abridged from Ed Advancement’s white paper, “AI, Equity, and Affordability: A Primer for Higher Education Leaders and Educators” (available here).
The Innovative Potential (by Julia Freeland Fisher, Director of Education Research at the Clayton Christensen Institute):
AI has the potential to power innovations that radically expand access and affordability. But to follow that path, we need R&D in pockets of the education market that have been priced out of mainstream, cutting-edge technology or where current technologies are not fit for purpose. As this piece outlines, positioning HBCUs as leading testbeds for new AI-enabled models could pave the way to one such disruptive path.
Crucially, however, this piece also offers a compelling case for designing AI for a higher purpose than much of the technology market has been geared toward. HBCUs are well-positioned to leverage AI in building a product architecture beyond edtech for the classroom or back office and toward edtech for mobility.
This approach–affordable technologies optimized for upward mobility–could generate progress on HBCU campuses and beyond, right-sizing the pricepoint of new technologies to be affordable for all institutions while designing technology that overcomes rather than reinforces opportunity gaps.
