‘Painful job losses likely’ as AI fills university admin roles

Institutions should retrain staff affected now rather than ‘sustain jobs which machines can do better and cheaper’, expert argues

Published on
October 16, 2025
Last updated
October 16, 2025
Tom Williams
Source: iStock/CRobertson
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Artificial intelligence in higher education
Employment issues
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Reader's comments (8)

#1 Submitted by s.... on October 16, 2025 - 8:33am
Writing course documents used to take days, all those aims, objectives, learning outcomes and sticking to the word count. I used my own pre AI method of copying large chunks of the docs of other courses I admired and changing as necessary. No-one ever read them anyway except during the review (and I doubt anyone really did then) and they seemed to have no measurable effect on the learning experience of any student. Let AI write them and possibly even be the external to check them...they'll none of them be missed.
#2 Submitted by i.... on October 16, 2025 - 2:26pm
If you course documents are that unimportant, then, rather than getting AI to write them, the solution is to not have them written at all. Of course there is a reason that the documents exist. I genuinely find the concept of learning objectives one of the most useful things I learnt during my lecturer training. Rather than just waffling on about a subject for an hour, or just spouting a set of facts that I expect students to spout back at my in the exam, I now go into a lecture with a concrete intellectual aim - there is a specific goal behind everything I say. Of course these forms can be cheated, and no one will every look at them. But you might find that you are cheating yourself and your students out of a better way to structure learning. The same goes for things like EDI sections on grant applications. There purpose is not to judge someones EDI policies, but rather for the applicant to prove that they have applied serious mental effort to thinking about it. You can cheat by copying, writing boilerplate, or using AI, but you have not then applied serious mental effort, which was the point.
#3 Submitted by bursar@... on October 16, 2025 - 11:49am
Key phrase is? - if for financial and productivity reasons have to choose between two flawed systems (humans or AI), then go for the cheaper (AI)!
#4 Submitted by p.... on October 17, 2025 - 10:07am
the “university exists not to serve its staff". Well that is stating the bleeding obvious as Basil Fawlty would have said. But surely the academic staff are part of the university, arguably the most important part of the University. I love the way the management defines itself as the "University" in this way as if it were the independent arbiter of the role and function of the university, and not, as some also might argue, a parasitic host on the body of the University? Let us put it thy8s way "the university exists not to serve the interests of it administarators and managers".
#5 Submitted by l.black... on October 17, 2025 - 2:23pm
If agendas and minutes can be written quicker, this will give us all time for more meetings.
#6 Submitted by andy.... on October 17, 2025 - 11:15pm
Apart from minute-taking, where GenAI is pretty good, what are these roles that can be entirely replaced with plausible-bullshit generators? I have plenty of critiques of the quality of uni admin (often so poor that academics are doubling up on admin tasks) but few or none that would be improved by generating more documentation to be sanity-checked. And then at the end we get a switch into pattern recognition for pedagogy, not something admin roles do, nor that GenAI is obviously the best tool for. As the AI investment bubble starts to wobble, can someone for once on down what an essential uni-improving AI workflow looks like, and why it's safe to tie ourselves to tools that may just be IP assets in bankruptcy proceedings in a year or two?
#7 Submitted by k.s.... on October 18, 2025 - 4:47pm
Yes we need to start slashing the administrative staff. Much of what they do can be easily done by AI or the academics using AI. The administraive bloat in UK Universities needs to be slashed as does the middle and upper management teams. This will then free money to give the academics better pay which has been cut to the bone despite the ever increasing workloads they face. I am fed up getting real wage cuts while senior management teams all "work" from home and come up only with silly policies and strategies and have negative value added.
#8 Submitted by ... on October 20, 2025 - 8:32am
Be careful what you wish for...

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