Why AI Strategy Belongs in the President’s Office — Campus Technology

Why AI Strategy Belongs in the President’s Office

Probably the most harmful phrases in larger training proper now are “we’ve got a committee engaged on AI.” It is a sample taking part in out throughout campuses with exceptional consistency, one which tends to unfold in the similar predictable sequence. A president acknowledges that AI is not non-obligatory. Feeling the urgency however unsure of the path, they convene a activity drive, assign a committee, and hand the initiative to HR, a newly minted innovation crew, or a keen provost. Then, having checked the field, they transfer on.

Six months later, the penalties of that handoff grow to be seen not as a single failure, however as a quiet fragmentation. One division is operating a chatbot for advising. One other bought a productiveness device that IT did not know existed till after the contract was signed. A 3rd drafted an AI coverage that bears little resemblance to what school are literally doing in the classroom. Everyone seems to be busy, and everybody believes another person is steering. Nobody is coordinating, and the establishment, as an entire, has not moved an inch in any coherent course.

This can be a management failure, and it’s taking place at scale, quietly and concurrently, at establishments that contemplate themselves forward-thinking. Educause’s 2025 AI Panorama Examine discovered that 57% of establishments now contemplate AI a strategic precedence, which feels like progress till you learn the subsequent quantity. Solely 22% have an institution-wide technique to point out for it. Of these, greater than half are managing adoption on an advert hoc foundation throughout disconnected departments, basically improvising at scale. The establishments which can be truly closing that hole share one factor in frequent, and it’s not a greater committee, a bigger finances, or a extra refined expertise stack. It’s a president who by no means handed off the wheel.

AI Is a Change Administration Juggernaut First

The intuition to deal with AI as a expertise downside is comprehensible. Technology is seen. It has distributors, demos, and worth tags. However the cause most campus AI efforts falter has nothing to do with the instruments and every little thing to do with who owns the change.

AI touches workforce roles, educational integrity, curriculum design, scholar providers, knowledge governance, and finances allocation concurrently. Taken collectively, that scope describes an institution-wide transformation, and no provost, CIO, or HR director has the cross-functional authority to guide one. Solely the president does.

In my expertise working throughout a whole bunch of establishments, the sample holds persistently throughout each main organizational transformation. When the chief govt leads from the entrance, change sticks. After they hand it off, it stalls. AI calls for the one factor solely a president can present, which is an institutional mandate with actual useful resource authority connected.

What Delegation Truly Produces

When AI technique is shipped down the management ladder, predictable issues occur. Departments purchase level options with out enterprise coordination. Shadow methods emerge. College and workers obtain conflicting steering. College students expertise inconsistency throughout the establishment.

Educause additionally discovered that 34% of educators consider their govt leaders are underestimating the price of AI adoption, and solely 2% report that new funding sources have been recognized for AI tasks. Underestimated prices plus no new sources is a setup for stalled momentum. It tells you that the monetary and strategic structure of AI hasn’t been claimed by the individuals who management institutional capital. That could be a presidential-level downside.