In the latest installment of Volt’s advice column ‘Dear Jaime,’ Jaime Hunt offers a very simple, two-pronged prediction for 2026. This will be a definitive year, Jaime says, for AI in higher education: The institutions who intentionally and creatively implement AI into both their marketing operations and their classrooms will excel — and those that don’t will begin to struggle.
For higher-ed marketers and administrators, 2026 will be the year the rubber hits the road with generative AI. Institutions will have to take a hard look at their slow-to-date adoption because AI has advanced to have incredible reasoning capabilities that Jaime says matter more than its writing ability, which she thinks is not even that great. But institutions have, so far, not been strategic or intentional with AI implementation, and that has to — and will change — in 2026. That means, particularly, not just tinkering with it around the edges, but building whole new workflows rooted in AI.
Meanwhile, colleges and universities also need to think about how they are integrating AI into teaching.
“As someone who teaches at the graduate level, I really need my students to understand the ethics and the legality of how they use these tools and how they can still learn and avoid the tendency or the temptation to tread into academic dishonesty.”
In sum, Jaime sees 2026 as an inflection point for AI in higher ed, and institutions have to make significant advances in AI both in the classroom and within their operations if they are going to continue to thrive and grow and stay competitive in a fast-changing landscape.
“If I’m going to predict anything, it’s that those schools that do this with intentionality are going to be the ones that are leaps and bounds ahead of those that are not.”
Dear Jaime is Volt’s regular advice column, hosted by Jaime Hunt, a higher-ed marketing consultant and former higher-ed CMO. To send her a question you’d like answered, you can message her on LinkedIn or send an email to jaime@solvehighered.com.
