THE BIG STORE CON AND AI: COMING TO A CAMPUS NEAR YOU THE BIG STORE CON AND AI: COMING TO A CAMPUS NEAR YOU

Renowned educationist, consultant and entrepreneur Dr. Madhukar G. Angur, Founder Chancellor of Alliance University, Bangalore, and Dr. Jack Helmuth, Professor of Finance at the University of Michigan, write about how online education assisted by artificial intelligence based tools can become much like a ‘big store con’ worldwide, using illustrations from both the USA and India, and how students can detect and guard against it. Dr. Angur holds a Ph.D. from the University of Texas, Arlington, USA; a Post Graduate Diploma in Management (PGDM) from the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, India, and a Bachelor of Technology degree in Electrical Engineering from the National Institute of Technology, Surathkal, India. Dr. Angur is the recipient of many awards and accolades including the David M. French Distinguished Professorship - a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Flint campus of the University of Michigan.

The Big Store refers to one of the classic long con confidence games. The con establishes a store, whether it be an investment brokerage, insurance agency, or even a bank. Perhaps it sounds familiar. In the movie “The Sting,” a fake racetrack-betting parlor served as the store. The Big Store was integral in Robert Stone’s novel A Hall of Mirrors, which was later made into a Paul Newman movie (Newman also starred in The Sting) called WUSA. Legendary long cons exist in the past as well as today; just recently, a big store, a fake bank, ran for an entire year in China.

There is a pervasive dichotomy evolving in American higher education. On the one hand, we have the traditional brickand-mortar, students-in-the-seats experience. Football, beer, Greek life, and going to a classroom for lectures or labs are long-established traditions. In-class exams, eye contact with your peers and professor, and most importantly, co-curricular and extra-curricular experiences are enormously important for a student’s education and development. The traditional campus will survive indefinitely. There will always be a market for the ivy towers.

On the other hand, there is online education, where a student can receive an entire degree remotely without ever stepping foot on campus. Highly recognizable universities provide such degrees, along with their traditional campus programs. There are also online degree programs that have little or no physical campus structure. In either case, can the quality, experience, and final product of an online education be equivalent to the traditional education? Most emphatically - NO.

Enter the prospect of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in education. AI can potentially bridge the gap between traditional and online education by providing personalized learning experiences, automating administrative tasks, and offering virtual tutoring. While AI cannot replace the value of in-person interactions, it can enhance online education and make it more competitive with the traditional campus experience.

Even though they are often priced identically, marketed to leave an impression that the degree is equally recognized, and even using the same identical instructors, the results of the two differ. The traditional campus, with all the incremental experiences, provides a far superior education. A sizeable majority of professors will agree with that assessment. This is despite dedicated faculty that are creatively employing the most current online technology, methodologies, and AIbased tools.

The push to legitimize, sans caveat emptor, online degrees is a classic big store brought about by circumstance. Many traditional campuses are faced with declining enrollment because of demographics. There are real budgetary crises, especially if you must keep fulltime faculty employed and the research wheels greased. Picture the empty hallways, empty classrooms, and empty coffers, all the ingredients that necessitate the big store revenue. Please note, our comments are not about the emergency Covid-19 education measure taken these past few years and likely to repeat itself if another wave of something like Covid-19 comes through. We are discussing the persistence of online degree education and the incorporation of AI to enhance the experience.

The irony of the big store con is that the target often does not know that they are conned. There will likely be sizeable income and societal differences between the two groups, and the online student may not recognize that they are being paid systematically less, advance more slowly in their careers, and generally not appreciable of the benefits of a broad education. Will there be exceptions? Of course, yes. However, eventually, the market segments, in terms of long-term earnings and success, will appear. Perhaps the online statistical underperformance will be masked by the complexity of the data and the con will not be fully detected. Or perhaps it will be when repaying student debt with less income capacity.

In either case, the perpetrators, as with any successful con, will have moved on undetected. Retirement programs are lucrative safe havens for them. The tragedy is that the target of the long con will be unaware of the consequences of matriculating in online degree programs, even with the integration of AI.

Any big store con must have a cast of players to populate the store. First up are the university administrators. Budgetary issues have driven them, with the allure of easy online money and the promise of AI-enhanced learning, to play the con. Of course, students will be happy with these courses; they grew up in the electronic information age. Administrators have a variety of sanctimonious rationales for these programs that no one seems to challenge. For instance, they like to claim that there is more student diversity, especially geographic, with distant learning. Realize that in the USA most state schools have an in-state and higher out-of-state tuition schedule that impedes such diversity in traditional programs. How clever! And the state tuition represents a regressive tax, where the poor are paying state taxes to help finance tuition for higher income groups that are disproportionately attending school. No one wants to upset that scheme.

Another player is the federally sanctioned accreditation agencies. There are regional accreditation agencies that evaluate the entire university and accreditation for programs, like nursing or business. People generally do not know that the accreditation process and reaccreditation reviews are peerconducted by administrators and faculty from other universities. One of the unsung reasons for their existence is that they provide (minimum) assurance of quality. Their regulatory oversight helps to negate state officials or university boards from delving too deeply into questions of quality or relevance. Admittedly, they have been active in raising questions and providing standards regarding online learning and the integration of AI. However, just a few decades ago, a main campus might have accreditation issues if they started an off-campus site on a military facility a few hours away, with quality classrooms and instructors, but no library facility. Now, anything goes with distance learning and AIenhanced education.

Politicians have been very adept at using voters’ concerns regarding the high cost of college education. Popular plans such as free tuition or student debt forgiveness are bandied about with gusto. Politicians with an even more populist bent are vocal concerning online education and demanding that AI technology should lower the cost of education. How will this play out? Balancing the budgetary realities with the popularity of state universities will require a political balancing act that will have the players in the big store scrambling for détente.

The students themselves, the target of the con (the mark), are players too. Many students have little choice but to opt for online programs because of a variety of circumstances. Even if they realize the program is second best, they must choose online. However, there is also a large portion that selects online simply for convenience. Some are merely interested in picking up a diploma (wall art). It is not uncommon for a student to select online classes even when they are living in hostels/dorms. Like a doubleedged sword, the internet provides opportunities to outsource homework and term papers at reasonable prices.

Ultimately, do these students realize that the online experience, even with the support of the most sophisticated AI, does not provide the same experience and results as the traditional program? Has anyone informed them of these costs? Perhaps the online advisor when they register online for the first time? The dean or the department chair? Is it commonly discussed in the media, providing not so much a warning, but simply information? Can incoming students, often first-generation college students, and their parents be that naïve? Apparently. After all, look at the massive student debt and, in many cases, the inability, even with a college degree(s), to pay off the debt. If they can make those bad decisions, they are equally capable of naively grasping the online degree program and assuming it provides the same ultimate benefits of the traditional degree, even with the incorporation of AI. As we know with any long con, the mark may never know they were conned. As decades roll by, this will create a segment of society that will be disillusioned by never achieving their dreams or their full potential. They have the best intentions. To paraphrase the legendary conman Joseph ‘Yellow Kid’ Weil, he never conned someone who did not want to be conned. This online education big store, even with AI’s potential to enhance learning, will leave a significant portion of their generation a lost generation, and no one will know what happened.

India has been inundated with Education Technology (EdTech) platforms which mushroomed over the past decade and grew in size particularly during the pandemic. However, the teaching and learning that supposedly occurred during the hay days are still questionable. Distributed learning and/ or blended learning methodologies are being experimented in various institutions of higher learning with mixed results.

No matter how sophisticated AI gets with any degree of AI enabled integration occurring in distance or distributed learning, it would not be able to completely replace face-to-face learning. Yes, AI will make a select group of jobs obsolete but new skills and enhanced adaptive skill development would evolve and universities and institution of higher learning must always be cognizant of this both in terms of knowledge creation and knowledge dissemination.

While AI has the potential to improve online education and bridge the gap between traditional and online learning experiences, it is essential to recognize that it cannot replace the value of inperson interactions and the overall campus experience. As higher education continues to evolve, it is crucial for universities, administrators, and students to be aware of the differences between online and traditional education and make informed decisions about their academic pursuits. The integration of AI in education should be approached with caution and a realistic understanding of its limitations, ensuring that the technology serves as an enhancement rather than a replacement for a well-rounded education.

(The views expressed in this article are solely of the author.)