AI + Education: What We’re Getting Wrong

Students using AI tools answered 48% more problems correctly. They scored 17% lower on concept understanding. More output. Less comprehension. That paradox is at the center of AI in education — and almost no institution has yet fully reckoned with it. In this episode, Dr. Marilyn Carroll moves past the cheating debate and asks the harder question: when intelligence is abundant and cheap, what is education actually for? With 84% of college faculty reporting that AI is reducing critical thinking and deep engagement, and a generation entering the workforce shaped by cognitive offloading, the implications for leaders and organizations are real and immediate. This isn't just a school problem. It's a leadership pipeline problem.

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SPEAKER_00 0:38

Hi guys, I'm Dr. Marilyn Carroll, and welcome back to Two Doctors and a Twist. Hey, we got some exciting stuff going on today. We are continuing on our podcast. And as you guys know, Dr. Jamie Chessler is out for a quarter working on a special project at work. And today we're going to talk about AI and education. What we're getting wrong. So let's start here, guys. Students using AI tools answered 48% more problems correctly. They scored 17% lore on concept understanding, more output, less comprehension. That paradox is the center of AI in education. And almost no institution has fully reckoned with it yet. Now, in this episode, uh I'm going to move past the cheating debate and ask the harder question. When intelligence is abundant and cheap, what actually what educationally, what is educationally actually for? Now, with 84% of college faculty reporting that AI is reducing critical thinking and deep engagement, and a generation entering the workforce shaped by cognitive offloading. The implications for leaders and organizations are real and immediate. Now, this isn't a school problem, it's a leadership pipeline problem. So students using AI are getting more answers right and understanding less. Let that sit for a second, okay? Because right now across education, we are seeing something that should that really should stop leaders in their tracks. More output, less comprehension. And most institutions have not fully reckoned with that, with what that means, you know. So maybe, maybe, maybe we're having the wrong conversation. The conversation around AI and education is really stuck, you may say. But they are not the real issue. And you may be asking, well, what's the real issue then, Marilyn? We are preparing, guys, I believe, for a world that AI is actively dismantling. And we have not redesigned what education should become. So let's ground this in what we're seeing. A study from the University of Pennsylvania found students using AI tools answered 48% more problems correctly, but scored 17% more on conceptual understanding. And that was in 2026, this study from University of Pennsylvania. So as I think about that, I think more correct answers, but less actual understanding. And I had to wonder if you studied those students the same way, if AI wasn't involved, how much understanding would we get from those that just answered questions because they took enough to pass an exam? Would we get the same thing? So another study from College Board found this that 84% of faculty believe AI is reducing critical thinking. Now, this is the same critical thinking that we were saying that we needed more people who understood critical thinking and the coming out of education. Come on now. Come on, come on. And research published by the science by Science Direct shows AI dependence is linked to cognitive fatigue and reduced independent reasoning. Now, this is not subtle, this is a really a structural thing, okay. Education was built for a world of scarcity. What do you mean? What do you mean, Marilyn? I mean scarcity of information, access, and knowledge production. That's when education originally came out. If you knew something that had value, that's what education was about. You were paid for that value. But now AI makes knowledge abundant, instant. Yes, we had the encyclopedia, we could have done that, but that took time. We had the dictionary and we had spelling bees that we developed from that. People took the tests or entered spelling bees, and we saw who knew how to spell words better than others, who understand, uh, who understood Latin better, that could actually pronounce and then come up with the words. We had, then we went to we had Google from Encyclopedia. We had Google, uh, we had Wikipedia. We have a lot of things that we did in between to develop that more knowledge. But somewhere somebody said, you know what? Let me take a spin off of Google and Wikipedia and Encyclopedia, because all those were built off things that were already there. Let's take a page from that and then let's start putting it into a system where we can readily get it available. And so the value of education that shifted it from producing answers to exercising judgment. Because we can get the answers, and we've been able to get the answers, truth be told, for a long time. It just didn't start with AI. We've we've been able to get those answers immediately. We've found all kinds of things. I remember when I was in college, we had Cliff Notes. Yeah, back then. Yes, we had Cliff Notes. We had a lot of different things that could help us summarize and put things together and move it on. We had the one-minute manager, we've had these smaller books, things of that nature that we could use to educate ourselves and to glean that knowledge right away, what we needed. I remember being in school in my first degree program, undergrad, back when I was 18, 19. And a lot of things we would do, we were like, okay, let me get this in, let me get this done, and let me move on. Okay. It wasn't really necessarily about getting that information in unless we knew it was going to be needed for a job. Uh, a lot of people thought that it was more technical in nature. Uh, and I when I say that, I just need to know how to draw blood when I was in nursing, or I just need to know how to take blood pressure, or I just need to know how to give a shot, or I just need to know how to give medication. People weren't really interested in the underlying foundational aspects of things as to the why. They were interested in the how. How do I do it? So get me those classes that teach me how, not why. All right. So you with me? Are you with me? Okay. So, uh, and most systems then I would say were designed for the old model of education. Now, the real risk, guys, this is where leaders need to pay attention, I think, because this is not just an education issue, this is a leadership pipeline issue. The people entering your organization may produce strong outputs, may complete tasks efficiently, may look highly capable, but if they cannot think critically, interpret complexity, challenge assumptions, then we got a problem. And I see it, I see it all the time. I really do. I'll enter these meetings with others, with clients, with others, and I'm like, are they really not thinking about this? They're just looking on the surface of things. They're not thinking critically, some people about things, they're not interpreting complexity and they're thinking too far. Just the other day, I was in a meeting and I'm looking at things, and people were talking to me about how much they would have to do and how it would come to uh how could they do it all and and whose responsibilities it should be, because they were thinking this is a lot of work. I listened, I really did listen, which you have to, you really have to listen in order to think critically. So I listened, I listened to what they were saying, and uh by the next morning, I said, okay, we can fix this. Their problem is this, and and so what how would I resolve that problem? So I've been listening for a week or two about different things, and it just dawned on me because I'm thinking critically, I understand their complexity, the problems that they're having, and and so their assumption was this can't be done because I only have so many people or so many widgets in a certain area that I can't do something, and uh I'm like, okay, well, you already have everything there, then all you got to do is blend it, and that's what we're finding with technology because technology uh it uh provides us with the opportunity to blend the things that we used to not being able to blend quickly. It's like the cake mixer. Before we used to have to beat that cake, beat the eggs, beat the butter, and that stuff. And that uh, of course, probably was better for us, saved our arms. A lot of us had better looking arms than we have now. Of course, I could have used that earlier, but when that mixer came out, we just plop everything in, blend it, and then uh to the certain consistency. We still have to do it the same way, you know, as far as adding the ingredients, and then you put that baby in the pan and uh you bake it. It became easier. That's the same way with technology, guys. The same thing. So, based on that problem, I witnessed, I took the main ingredients, blended it, put it together, and then uh once we bake it and and have the outcome, it's still a beautiful cake you have without going through all those particular challenges that the group was saying they were going through. Now, when you do these things, you don't have to think about capability, you have performance, as I just described, and those are not the same thing, okay? You don't just have capability, you have performance. They had the capability all along, they had the ingredients there, but they didn't know how to put it together to have that performance because they weren't thinking critically. Okay. Now this is the leadership decision at the moment. And I want to make this real. I thought it was with the cake making thing. Yes, I use food as metaphors a lot. Cooking, basically. Uh, I've used this one, this example I'm about to talk about here several times. So a new hire joins your team. They're fast, efficient, they produce high-quality work. Everything looks strong, right? Everything looks strong until something unexpected happens. The situation changes, there's ambiguity, no clear answer, and suddenly they stall, they stall, they stall, they stall. Because the system they learned in trained them to produce, but not to think. They can produce, but they can't think. It happens in education all the time. Every system we have, even with the teachers. I know my teeth, I know my friends who are in K through 12, those that are in college settings. We are trained to produce a lot of times and not to think. And I see it happening all the time. In business, I saw it happen. Okay, I saw it and it it hurts. And now leadership has to really step in, not to correct performance, but to build capability that was never developed. Now, you got to have the right type of leadership that understands that. Because no more are we just with leaders that say do. The leader has to understand what's going on in order to help their team be able to maximize the result. You just can't push, push, push if you don't have the right talent because you're gonna keep looking for the wrong talent each time you do something or you build something, or you're moving to the next transformation. Talent has to be different than talent was before, especially leadership talent. Okay, so what needs to change first? We have to shift what we really have to shift the organization what we value, and what we value from from the output to the judgment, that means designing education around interpretation, censuses, critic critiquing, and decision making. How do you synthesize this information? Okay. Second, we must require active engagement. That is why in my work with the learning archetype assessment and the whole person model of learning, everything starts with self-awareness, reflection, ownership of learning. Because passive learning, guys, is exactly what AI reinforces. And if we don't interrupt that, we will scale the tendency, okay? Not development, and what we need is development. So the system connection comes down to this. This connects directly to the human performance architecture because education is not just about knowledge, guys, it's about producing capability, identity, and readiness. And if the system is not designed to produce those outcomes, it won't. So let's bring this together for you. AI is not about breaking education, guys. That's not what AI is about, okay? It is revealing what education was already missing, to my in my my view, and many views. We built systems to produce answers, but the future requires judgment. I want you to get this now. We built systems to produce answers, not to that requires judgment. And until we redesign for that, we will continue producing people who can perform but cannot lead. And we wonder, we we promoted so many people who can perform well, uh, produce, do a great job, but they know nothing really about leading, okay? And that's where we have a challenge. So let's break this down, okay? You had you you you you when I was a manager, I became a manager at a theater before I finished high school. Yeah. Before I finished high school, and I'm gonna tell you this. I could perform, I could perform well, I could get those tickets, so I could do a lot of things. But I'm gonna tell you the truth. I did not understand management. I was just thrown in a management position. I I didn't bit more know how to manage. They may have the people who put me in management, may have seen how I could manage. They have seen how I was managing my work, they could see how I was getting along with other people. But there are so many other things about management that you need in order to keep your company alive and well. It's understanding the financials, understanding what's in and out, understanding how to communicate with you. Even though you may be in the corporate headquarters looking at the financials and the numbers, but are you there every day looking at the ground and what's going on and who's coming in, who's coming out? Are you there in those communities where your businesses are operating, where you can talk about what may be happening with that? That's where your leaders come in. They have to know the community and the environment in which they operate. So if we can't teach people to understand what the capabilities are, oh wow, and to have judgment and to think. Oh my gosh, we we're gonna be we we're gonna keep seeing companies shut down day after day. So before the next episode, I want you to reflect on this. In your organization, are you rewarding output or judgment? Are you hiring for performance or thinking? Are you developing capability or just measuring results? Because what you reinforce is what your systems produce. The next episode, we take everything we discussed: governance, accountability, leadership, and learning over the last nine episodes, and this will produce our tenth episode of this series, and we test it under pressure. Yes, we are. Because systems don't break when things are easy. They don't. They break when things when it matters most, and we're at the breaking point now. We really are. So thank you for joining me on this episode of Two Doctors and a Twist. I'm Dr. Marilyn Carroll, and we'll see you on episode 10. Take care.