Humans have long retreated to special spaces to cultivate the mind. The library, the monastery, the scientific laboratory—the university itself—have, across cultures and times, enabled particular kinds of thinking: deep study, contemplation of the transcendent, scientific experimentation, the pursuit of truths unclouded by political interests. This principle undergirds the model of the residential college, an immersive environment that promises to transform young adults through rich learning experiences unfolding across spaces that support exploration, inquiry and focus. In 2026, we are compelled to ask, what happens to the distinctive intellectual experience offered by the residential college in the age of generative AI?
I share this from the front lines: College instructors are scrambling. Following a dozen years as a tenure-stream Spanish professor, I transitioned in fall 2025 to working closely with faculty across disciplines as an educational developer at a private liberal arts university, where I provide coaching to support excellence in teaching. During the fall semester, instructors described to me a dramatic uptick in unauthorized uses of AI. By January 2026, many faculty had concluded that the written assignments that had been a mainstay of their teaching—providing a meaningful method for checking students’ reading comprehension and developing their analytical skills—were no longer worth assigning. Students were submitting AI-generated prose. Math faculty began to find it untenable to award students points for completing homework sets obviously outsourced to a chatbot.
