Universities Deserve Their AI-Induced Doom: A Sceptic’s Case for Letting the Temples of Treason Crumble! By Professor X
Here I tear into the academic ivory tower with the glee of a kid smashing a piñata. The October 2025 piece by Olivia Guest and Iris van Rooij (link below) nails a grim truth: AI, particularly large language models (LLMs), is hollowing out higher education. Students are churning out year-long essay assignments in minutes while sunbaking on beaches, and universities, those self-proclaimed "temples of reason," are crumbling under the weight of their own hypocrisy. But here's the hot take: They deserve it! For decades, academia has peddled overpriced degrees, bloated bureaucracies, and dogmatic groupthink, betraying the pursuit of truth for prestige and profit. AI's disruption isn't the villain; it's the reckoning. I examine why universities are their own worst enemies, how LLMs expose their rot, and why we should let these temples of treason burn, sceptically, of course, with a nod to Guest and van Rooij's warnings about techno-fascism.
Picture this: It's 2025, and a sophomore at a mid-tier uni is sipping a mojito on Bondi Beach. Instead of slaving over a 3,000-word essay on Foucault's panopticon, they fire up ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini. In 10 minutes, they've got a polished, B+-worthy paper, complete with citations, nuanced arguments, and just enough jargon to fool a hungover TA. X posts are buzzing with it: "Just aced my poli-sci term paper while surfing. AI go brrr." Studies back this up: By mid-2025, 60% of U.S. college students admit to using LLMs for assignments, with detection rates under 20% despite Turnitin's "AI plagiarism" tools. Universities are scrambling, some ban AI, others mandate it, while profs quietly use it to grade or write syllabi. It is the writing machine for the Left; perfect for the uncritical nonsense they produce.
Guest and van Rooij argue this "deskills" students, eroding critical thinking as LLMs churn out "patchwork plagiarism" from scraped scholarship. They're not wrong; LLMs often remix stolen work, and overreliance dumbs down analysis. The system are useless for conservatives; too unreliable for STEM work. But let's flip the script: Why should students sweat for a system that's been fleecing them for years? Tuition in the U.S. averages $40,000/year for private colleges; in Australia, HECS debts hit $50,000 for a bachelor's. For what? Lectures recycled from 1995, adjuncts paid peanuts, and degrees that barely guarantee a barista gig. If AI lets students game a broken system, good on them, it's poetic justice.
Universities: Temples of Treason Against Reason
Guest and van Rooij call universities bulwarks against "propaganda, anti-intellectualism, and illiteracy," warning AI's corporate creep risks "techno-fascism." Noble, but naive. Universities stopped being truth's guardians long ago, they're corporate machines peddling credentials over curiosity, flooding the country with migrants. Here's the sceptic's charge sheet:
Dogmatic Orthodoxy: Campuses enforce ideological monocultures. Dissent on hot-button issues (gender, climate, politics) risks cancellation; look at the 2023 firing of a UCLA prof for questioning DEI quotas. X threads roast this: "Unis aren't for debate; they're for obedience."
Bureaucratic Bloat: Admin costs eat 40% of U.S. uni budgets, doubling since 2000, while tenure-track jobs shrink. Meanwhile, students drown in debt for "student life" fees funding climbing walls and diversity offices.
Complicity with AI: Universities aren't victims; they're enablers. Guest and van Rooij note AI firms "capture" administrations, co-opting faculty to push tools like Copilot. Stanford's 2025 "AI-Integrated Curriculum" pilot? Sponsored by Microsoft. Hypocrisy 101: Cry "academic freedom" while cashing Big Tech checks.
AI exposes this treason. If a $20/month LLM like ChatGPT can outwrite a woke $20,000/semester prof, what's the point? Students aren't lazy, they're rational actors exploiting a system that exploits them. Why slog through "critical reading" when the game's rigged?
Guest and van Rooij warn of "techno-fascism," AI firms like OpenAI and Nvidia hijacking knowledge for profit, deskilling scholars, and echoing fascist assaults on educators. They're half-right: AI's corporate push is predatory. OpenAI's $6.6 billion valuation (2025) thrives on scraped data, books, papers, Reddit posts, without consent. Universities, complicit or not, lose control as students and profs lean on LLMs, bypassing traditional rigor.
But the fascism bit? Overreach. Fascists burned books; AI just remixes them. The real threat isn't jackboots, it's apathy. Students using AI to cheat aren't stormtroopers; they're pragmatists dodging a system that overcharges for outdated methods. And let's not romanticise academia: It's been fleecing students and stifling dissent long before ChatGPT. The "bulwark" myth ignores how universities churn out groupthink grads who parrot, not probe.
Here's the sceptic's case: Don't save universities, let AI gut them. They've betrayed reason by:
Pricing Out Truth: Skyrocketing costs gatekeep knowledge, making self-education (via YouTube, X, or yes, AI) more appealing. Why pay $100k for a degree when Google Gemini can explain Foucault for free?
Stifling Inquiry: Cancel culture and tenure politics crush free thought. AI, for all its flaws, offers unfiltered answers, sometimes less false than a prof's lecture notes.
Selling Out: Partnering with Big Tech while preaching "independence" is peak hypocrisy. If universities love AI's cash, they can't cry when it eats their lunch.
The fix isn't banning AI (good luck enforcing that) or pining for 1950s lecture halls. It's competition: Let online platforms, trade schools, and open-source learning thrive. If universities can't adapt, they deserve obsolescence. Guest and van Rooij want a "principled stand" against AI tools in classrooms. No, let students keep their beachside essay hacks. It's the ultimate middle finger to a system that's been flipping them off for years.
The Sceptic's Caveat
Don't get me wrong, AI's not a hero. It hallucinates, steals content, is woke with a Left-wing bias, and risks turning us into lazy button-pushers. But blaming LLMs for academia's fall is like blaming a sledgehammer for a crumbling house, the structure was rotten. Universities must evolve: Ditch dogma, slash bloat, prioritise real mentorship. Until then, I'm Team Chaos, let AI expose the frauds.
Academia at present is not worth saving; let AI finish the job!
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