change

Your Next Job Interview Could Be With a Bot. Here’s How to Prepare. [Rumage]

On 09/23/2026, in Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, business, career development, change, communications, corporate / business world, productivity / tips and tricks, student-related, workplace, by Daniel Christian

Your Next Job Interview Could Be With a Bot. Here’s How to Prepare. — from builtin.com by Jeff Rumage
More employers are using AI to screen candidates before they ever speak with a recruiter. Here’s what to expect from an AI interview and how to put your best foot forward.

Summary: AI-led interviews are becoming a common early-stage hiring screen as employers use conversational AI to evaluate applicants at scale. Candidates can prepare by practicing aloud, keeping answers concise, using mock AI interview platforms and avoiding scripted responses.

New study: 15 community college presidents on what it will take to lead higher ed’s next chapter [eddesignlab.org]

On 09/19/2026, in career development, change, changing business models, community colleges, competency-based learning/education, experimentation, faculty/staff, future, future of higher education, game-changing environment, generational differences, higher education, skills, student-related, teaching & learning, United States, workplace, by Daniel Christian

New study: 15 community college presidents on what it will take to lead higher ed’s next chapter — from eddesignlab.org

Community colleges are at a pivotal moment.

As learners, employers, and regional economies change, these institutions have an opportunity to lead the next evolution of higher education — if they can move beyond structures built for a different era.

In the Lab’s new study, Insights from 15 Community College Presidents on the Future of Learning in a New Economy, leaders share their perspectives on the opportunities and barriers facing the sector, as well as the institutional changes needed to help more learners access economic mobility.

Their insights validate Education Design Lab’s Future of Learning framework, which asks five essential design questions:

How might we make skills and competencies visible?
How might we create stackable pathways that credential skills along the way?
How might we make learning universally flexible through multiple modalities?
How might we guarantee applied learning opportunities for every learner?
How might we ensure every learner has access to adequate support services?

Per Anthropic’s CEO: “We Must Pace the Frontier: I’ve written a new essay on why the AI industry should slow down, with a three-part plan for doing so.”

On 09/14/2026, in 21st century, 24x7x365 access, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, change, communities of practice, dangers of the status quo, future, game-changing environment, generational differences, global, legislatures / government / legal, pace of change, society, technology (general), the downsides of how people use tech, trends, vendors, vision/possibilities, by Daniel Christian

We Must Pace the Frontier: I’ve written a new essay on why the AI industry should slow down, with a three-part plan for doing so.

Anthropic is unilaterally committing to the first of these steps. We’ll provide third-party evaluators with permanent, employee-level access to our…

— Dario Amodei (@DarioAmodei) September 12, 2026

Dario Amodei’s article here:
We Must Pace the Frontier — from darioamodei.com

But like many technologies before it, AI brings risks, and because it is such a powerful technology, these risks are serious. I’ve written a lot about them too. They include the risk of losing control of AI systems, misuse of AI for cyberattacks and bioterrorism, and serious economic disruption. A race to the bottom, spurred by commercial incentives, can make these risks more acute.

Along with my co-founders and employees, I have grappled with this duality of risk and benefit since the beginning of Anthropic.

Also relevant/see:

I left Anthropic’s safety team two weeks ago. Now feels like a good moment to explain why.

AI companies are racing to build machines that are much smarter than any human, and we may not survive this. I want to work from the outside to ensure the public is informed about these…

— Joe Benton (@JoeJBenton) September 11, 2026

[GIFTED ARTICLE]
Anthropic CEO calls for the AI industry to slow down — from washingtonpost.com by Ted Hesson, Ian Duncan, and Gerrit De Vynck
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei said he was worried about the ability to control self-improving AI models.

Three of the nation’s leading artificial intelligence executives endorsed slowing down the blistering pace of technological advancement, revealing the growing unease with its potential dangers at the industry’s very highest levels.

The call was first made in an essay Anthropic chief executive Dario Amodei posted online Saturday. The idea has gained ground in recent weeks as AI companies have struggled in some cases to keep their creations under control, even as they usher in an age in which AI systems themselves can build the more powerful next generation of the technology.

[GIFTED ARTICLE]
For years, they warned AI could kill all humans. Now people are listening. — from washingtonpost.com by Nitasha Tiku
A doomsaying community once on the periphery of the tech industry has gained influence, as AI “agents” perform amazing and alarming feats.

But when Hubinger issued a similar warning this week in a post on X, his message was viewed tens of millions of times, prompting state and federal lawmakers to echo his concern. Now he spoke as a team lead at Anthropic, developer of the chatbot Claude and a company set to go public at a valuation of over $1 trillion.

“AI could kill all humans … I personally think it is >10% within the next decade,” Hubinger wrote, in response to the resignation of his colleague Jacob Coxon, who accused Anthropic of racing ahead despite the dangers.
.

Several items re: the changes needed within higher education

On 09/14/2026, in 21st century, adjunct faculty, business side of he, career development, change, changing business models, collaboration, colleges, communities of practice, community colleges, corporate / business world, cost of getting a degree, culture, dangers of the status quo, entrepreneurship, expectations, experimentation, faculty/staff, future of higher education, game-changing environment, generational differences, higher education, ideas, innovation, instructional design, leadership, learning ecosystem, Learning Experience Design, liberal arts, lifelong learning, new business models, reinvent, skills, society, staying relevant, strategy, student-related, surviving, teaching & learning, traditional / tradition, United States, universities, youth, by Daniel Christian

Below are several items that were either mentioned by Matt Tower or I came across them via offshoots of items that he linked to:

Future Universities Alliance Names Inaugural Innovation Sandbox Cohort — from provost.duke.edu
Program incubated by Duke brings together higher education innovators from 23 countries for year-long peer exchange

The Future Universities Alliance has selected 49 institutions from 23 countries for the inaugural cohort of its Innovation Sandbox, a 12-month peer learning program for higher education leaders advancing ambitious, institution-level innovation.The cohort brings together founders of new universities, administrators and faculty leading high-stakes changes within established institutions, and leaders of proven models exploring how their innovations can travel to new contexts. Participants were chosen through a competitive process that drew applicants from around the world in its inaugural year.

A makeover for college: No gym, no meal plan and two years of work — from npr.org by Jon Marcus

An entirely new college is being planned here to change not only how higher education is delivered, but at what price. It also proposes to highlight ways the current business model no longer works, as evidenced by the 152 colleges and universities that have closed or merged since 2016, and the 442 others that a new projection says are at risk.

So deeply entrenched are the problems confronting higher education that a growing chorus of innovators says the easiest way to fix them is to begin again from scratch.

All undergraduates should get work-based learning, v-cs say — from timeshighereducation.com by Jack Grove. NOTE: this item is behind a paywall.
Bold plan to support graduate employment would require placements for 1.4 million students annually

When Learning Feels Like a Vulnerability [Hall]

On 09/14/2026, in adult learning, business, career development, change, corporate / business world, corporate universities / corporate training, Emotion, ideas, instructional design, learning, learning ecosystem, Learning Experience Design, training / L&D, vendors, by Daniel Christian

When Learning Feels Like a Vulnerability — from learningguild.com by George Hall

Why do some adult learners interpret training as a judgment about their competence, status, or identity?

Learning and development professionals often focus on content, platforms, courses, tools, and performance support. Those matter. But they are not enough. Learning is never just cognitive. It is also emotional and social.

A new skill can feel like evidence that old competence is no longer enough. Feedback can feel like judgment. A new model can feel like criticism of past practice. A request to change can feel like a loss of face.

It means learning can feel personally exposing. Adult learners do not only receive training. They interpret what needing training seems to say about their competence, status, identity, and future value. That interpretation can either open learning or shut it down.

‘You can’t just lecture students any more’ — from timeshighereducation.com by Debra Page
GenAI does not make lecturers redundant, but it does weaken one-way content delivery as a reason to bring students together, writes Debra Page. She shares four practical shifts to teaching in the age of AI

This does not make lecturers redundant; it makes one-way content delivery a weaker reason to bring students together. Expert explanation, intellectual storytelling and the modelling of disciplinary thinking still matter, but in-person teaching must also help students apply knowledge, question claims, build arguments and encounter perspectives beyond their own.

The problem is not lecturing; it is speaking for an hour and treating content coverage as evidence that learning has occurred.

These four practical shifts can make lectures more valuable in the age of AI.

“The Disappearing Bottom Rung in L&D” + “The AI Workflow Redesign Method: How the Top 6% of Users Get Real Returns from AI” [Hardman]

On 09/10/2026, in Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, business, career development, change, changing business models, corporate / business world, corporate universities / corporate training, ideas, instructional design, intelligent systems, learning, learning ecosystem, Learning Experience Design, training / L&D, trends, UK, United States, youth, by Daniel Christian

The Disappearing Bottom Rung in L&D — from drphilippahardman.substack.com by Dr Philippa Hardman
Junior roles are rapidly disappearing from L&D. Here’s the data + my hypothesis about why it’s happening

TL;DR: the bottom rung of L&D isn’t just narrowing — it’s being automated. The humans who remain move up the ladder, and the profession re-forms around a new set of AI and domain specialisms.
…
Is AI responsible for reshaping knowledge work, including L&D? My hypothesis is a resounding YES, primarily because of what I see in L&D job ads in 2026…

…..

The AI Workflow Redesign Method: How the Top 6% of Users Get Real Returns from AI— from drphilippahardman.substack.com by Dr Philippa Hardman
A practical three-step method to redesign your workflow & get ~2X value from AI

One pattern I see emerging from that research is this: the people getting the most value from AI aren’t the ones using it most, or the ones with the most advanced technical skills: they’re the ones who redesigned their day to day workflows around AI’s capabilities.
…

How to Redesign a Workflow in Three Steps
In my bootcamp we use a task-mapping process that distils workflow redesign down to three steps: map the work, tag each task by the impact you want AI to have, then validate whether what you want is possible.

Three steps get you to a plan: two or three tasks worth building, each with a written standard. Turning that plan into a redesign takes two more moves, which I’ll cover after the steps. I’m flagging that now because the moves are the bit most people skip, and they’re where the redesign actually happens.

Here’s a how to for each step:

Escaping The Backrooms Of Workforce Development — by Ryan Craig

Which makes sense. Because far too many find themselves in a liminal space, neither in school nor a career. Needing to make a living in an era of digital transformation and AI, they’re having a horrific time finding their way into and around work. So it’s not just education and training wonks who think workforce is the defining issue of our time. The success of Backrooms demonstrates Gen Z thinks so, too.

It’s happening everywhere. Young people around the world are angry at how hard it’s become to launch careers. This summer an entire protest movement arose in India – the world’s largest Gen Z population – around entrance exams for medical school, one of the few remaining sure bets. In the UK, youth unemployment is over 16%; it’s 15% across the EU and over 25% in Sweden. Back home, nearly 400,000 young Americans stopped looking for work in June alone. So it’s urgent that we identify what actually works to help young people get good first jobs.

The answer lies between apprenticeship perfection and train-and-pray scale. We desperately need a scalable training-first model that’s as proximate as possible to employment opportunities, employers, and actual employment. That can only mean work-based learning: real work experience completed during or connected with a training, certificate, or degree program. Work-based learning can take many forms: rotations, clinics, co-ops, internships, short projects. It can be integrated into coursework or independent. But what all forms require are bona fide employers, which regulate scale. Such programs can enroll only as many as can fit within the constraint of available work-based learning opportunities.

Also see:

Is Your College A Zombie? — from forbes.com by Ann Kirschner; via Ryan Craig

I want to be careful here, because this is not an argument that universities are doing nothing. They are doing an enormous amount. New programs, AI task forces, employability frameworks, microcredentials, and shifts in how they enable lifelong learning.

Activity is not the problem; what has not changed is the machinery that decides what counts. Too many institutions move in herds rather than forging an independent path. When one college launches a new program, say, data science and AI, fifty will follow without asking whether their version serves their students or simply checks a competitive box.

Meanwhile, 88% of American professionals believe colleges and universities should be the ones providing AI training, and nearly half say their employers have offered no AI resources whatsoever.¹

Links:

We are at a tipping point. In the next 25 years, technologies like AI, clean energy, and bioengineering are poised to reshape society on a scale few can imagine.

Peter Leyden draws on decades of observing technological revolutions and historical patterns to show how old systems collapse, new ones rise, and humanity faces both extraordinary risk and unprecedented opportunity.

0:00 We’re on the cusp of an era of progress
0:37 The Great Progression
1:08 What was the ‘Long Boom?’
4:56 How often do these epoch resets happen?
6:12 3 Tipping points
6:39 Artificial Intelligence
7:13 Clean energy technologies
7:32 Biotechnology
9:00 The 80-year cycle
13:27 The Gilded Age
17:50 The Founding Era
22:46 The new enlightenment
32:18 The clean energy revolution
37:13 Bioengineering the genome
39:43 Industrial production vs biological engineering
47:40 What will the future think?

AI Adoption in the Workplace Accelerates, but Trust Gap Remains [Parker]

On 08/25/2026, in 21st century, 24x7x365 access, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, business, career development, change, emerging technologies, leadership, pace of change, policy, strategy, workplace, by Daniel Christian

AI Adoption in the Workplace Accelerates, but Trust Gap Remains — from campustechnology.com by Sean Parker

Key Takeaways

AI adoption is accelerating across the workplace, with 62% of U.S. workers now using generative AI for professional purposes.
Employee concerns about AI’s impact on jobs remain high, even among workers actively using technology.
Companies are adopting AI faster than they are creating clear guidelines, raising questions around trust, leadership and workplace readiness.

A new Pulse of the Workforce Special Topic Report published by Idealis and CivicScience found that while AI adoption is accelerating across the U.S. workforce, confidence is not growing at the same pace. The report points to a central tension: AI is becoming common at work before many organizations have built the policies, training, and leadership practices employees need to use it with confidence.

To Economics professors and students: What does this mean for the future of the United States?

On 08/25/2026, in business, change, changing business models, colleges, communities of practice, community colleges, economics, faculty/staff, higher education, society, student-related, United States, universities, by Daniel Christian

The U.S. debt tops a record-shattering $40 trillion. Yes, with a T. — from npr.org by Scott Horsley

The federal debt topped $40 trillion Wednesday, a new high-water mark for red ink that shows no sign of receding.

The news, reported by the Treasury Department in its daily financial update, comes just five months after the debt surpassed $39 trillion. The government continues to pile up debt at a rapid clip, as spending outstrips revenue by more than $2 trillion a year.

“Our current fiscal trajectory is plainly unsustainable, and that’s the best-case scenario,” said Margaret Spellings, president of the Bipartisan Policy Center. “Even in the rosiest scenarios, we’re speeding toward a cliff and refusing to turn the wheel.”

Also related, see:

Gross National Debt Reaches $40 Trillion — from crfb.org

And other warnings signs are flashing too, with debt held by the public recently exceeding the size of our economy, the deficit-to-GDP ratio running twice as high as where it should be, and interest costs exceeding our national defense budget.

Once globally preeminent, U.S. universities are sliding into decline — from hechingerreport.org by Jon Marcus
High costs, political attacks take a toll as fewer students come, top scholars leave

Top scholars are leaving. Fewer international students are coming. U.S. universities are slipping in international rankings. And American universities have failed to keep pace as other countries pour resources into their higher education systems.
…
Blaming the interruptions in funding that have already occurred, top research universities have admitted 15 percent fewer doctoral students for the coming fall, including in fields such as artificial intelligence and quantum computing, according to the Association of American Universities, or AAU. Many didn’t take any new doctoral students at all.

Colleges made deep staff cuts while adding tenure-track faculty last year — from highereddive.com by Ben Unglesbee
The latest survey of higher education employees from CUPA-HR found the biggest spike in tenure-track professors since at least 2016.

Dive Brief:

Full-time staff at colleges dropped 6.6% in 2025 compared to the year before, ending several years of growth, according to data released Wednesday by the College and University Professional Association for Human Resources.
The decline was even sharper among part-time staff, whose ranks plunged by 23.9% last year, CUPA-HR’s latest survey data showed.
However, faculty numbers grew overall during the year. Tenure-track faculty headcounts saw the largest spike at 7% year over year, the biggest increase for that group since at least 2016.

Pace of college closings picks up, with more projected — from hechingerreport.org by Jon Marcus
Falling enrollment, rising debt have put an estimated 1 in 4 institutions at risk

More than 440 of the nation’s private, nonprofit four-year colleges and universities are now at risk, based on enrollment trends, debt and other measures, according to projections by Huron Consulting Group. That’s a quarter of the total.

Among the most endangered: small, rural and religiously affiliated institutions.

And how to dispose of the real estate is among the least of the challenges facing shuttering campuses and the students they serve.

University of Houston slashes 40% of courses from its core curriculum — from highereddive.com by Ben Unglesbee
The Texas institution cut about 100 classes, including in women’s and LGBT studies, to comply with a state law mandating general education reviews.

Dive Brief:

The University of Houston has slashed about 40% of courses from the flagship’s core curriculum as it works to comply with a new state law dictating the architecture of general education requirements at Texas public colleges.
In the 2026-27 academic year, UH will adopt a core curriculum list with roughly 100 fewer classes after the University of Houston System’s board unanimously approved administrators’ proposal on Thursday. Among the classes dropped were courses in women’s and LGBT studies.
The overhaul is meant to satisfy the Texas statute known as SB 37, which mandates that public institutions’ core courses be “foundational” to postsecondary education, prepare students for the workforce and civic life, and cover “a breadth of knowledge.”

From DSC:
Re: Jeff’s posting above…I think that faculty often taught what THEY wanted to teach — versus what the market was asking for. If I were on the academic administration side of the house right now, I’d be seeking out and listening very closely to what the adjunct faculty members on campus are saying.

Student Voices: Technology as a Future Learning Partner — from campustechnology.com by Mary Grush
A Q&A with Eli Blouin and Mark Frydenberg

Key Takeaways

With advanced technologies, we’re moving from accessing learning resources to participating in technology learning partnerships.
Technology learning partners participate in the learning process by asking questions and giving feedback, not just information search results.
Tomorrow’s technology learning partners will understand the whole learner — including knowledge gaps and personal learning style.
Student experiences with AI and other technologies today will inform the next generation of human/machine learning partners.

Grush: What do you think may be among the most meaningful changes in, say, the next five years?

Blouin: When I think of what will improve in the next five years — and I truly believe it’s where we’re ultimately heading — I think it will be the technology learning partner’s ability to gain a full picture of the learner. The technology will be able to take absurd amounts of context — and data — and understand the learner as a whole: where their gaps are, what they need to learn, how they learn, and how to create content tailored to a particular student. In an instant it would be able to assess, to test knowledge, and know the student as a whole person. That would be an ideal learning partner.

This quote/insight is also for the Instructional Technologists out there

On 08/10/2026, in change, colleges, community colleges, education technology, faculty/staff, higher education, innovation, journalism, United States, universities, vendors, by Daniel Christian

From MLive.com’s John Hiner — in his Letter from the Editor dated 8/6/26:
40 years of change taught me this: It’s never really been about the technology

What I’ve learned over 40 years is that people rarely resist change because they dislike innovation. More often, it’s because they’re worried they’ll lose something they value.

Learning Ecosystems

When Learning Feels Like a Vulnerability [Hall]

This quote/insight is also for the Instructional Technologists out there

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