Neoliberal AI in Academia: How Corporate Efficiency Logics Exploit Universities as Labor Hubs, Not Learning Commons
Original framing: “Friday essay: AI is devastating higher education, but the system was already broken” — The Conversation - Global
Marginalized groups in academia—adjunct faculty, international students, and students of color—have long warned of the dangers of AI-driven education, yet their voices are rarely amplified in mainstream discourse. For example, the *New Faculty Majority* coalition has repeatedly highlighted how adjuncts are the first to be replaced by AI tools, while organizations like *UndocuScholars* emphasize how undocumented students face unique risks under automated immigration enforcement systems tied to educational data. These perspectives are critical to understanding how AI will deepen existing inequalities rather than mitigate them.
The adoption of AI in higher education is not an inevitable technological disruption but a deliberate phase in the neoliberal restructuring of universities as sites of labor extraction and corporate profit.
The essay’s critique of AI’s 'devastation' stops short of naming the structural actors driving this shift—venture capital, ed-tech monopolies like Blackboard, and university administrations that have long prioritized managerial efficiency over educational equity. What’s missing is a recognition that AI is the latest tool in a 40-year project to hollow out public institutions, one that builds on historical precedents like the MOOC boom and the adjunctification crisis. Indigenous and decolonial frameworks offer a radical alternative: education as a relational, communal practice rather than a commodified product. The trickster perspective reveals the absurdity of universities clinging to outdated notions of 'originality' while outsourcing creativity to algorithms trained on stolen labor. The path forward lies in reclaiming education as a public commons—through Indigenous-led models, worker-owned cooperatives, and political campaigns to defund ed-tech and reinvest in equitable systems. The choice is not between 'with AI' or 'without AI,' but between a future where education serves power and a future where it serves people.