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The Rise of the Agentic AI University in 2026
We are experiencing the continuous, rapid development of the Generative AI of 2023 and concurrently, the movement to the emerging Agentic AI of 2026. Agentic AI is no longer merely an interactive tool we talk to; it is a colleague that acts for us.
In a very active and highly competitive environment, AI has grown at breakneck speed. As with so many technologies, business and industry have moved far faster than academe to embrace the cost-savings, capability-expanding, and wholly innovative aspects of AI. Fraught with our own industry-specific challenges such as enrollment downturns, sharp drops in perceived value, the striking “math cliff” in higher ed, and a rapidly changing regulatory policy shift in state and federal administration, our field has been cast into a sea of pressing priorities for changes. This year is likely to be the one where we begin to implement AI-powered institution-wide solutions to help us move forward with agility and effectiveness in adapting to the changing environment. As Aviva Legatt writes in Forbes’ “7 Decisions That Will Define AI in Higher Education in 2026:”
Over the past year, the shift from AI as a tool to AI as institutional infrastructure has become unmistakable. Students have already integrated AI into daily academic workflows, vendors are pushing enterprise deployments, federal and accreditation expectations are rising, and labor-market volatility is forcing colleges to rethink how learning connects to opportunity. At the same time, agentic AI is moving from experimentation to execution, reshaping how advising, enrollment, learning support, and operations can be delivered. In 2026, these threads converge: institutions that operationalize AI will widen their performance gap, while those that don’t will inherit a shadow system they can’t control.
Yet, where these changes will take place within the field, how these changes will impact our higher education workforce, and the extent to which we can change in time to meet our market demand by producing knowledgeable and skilled employees for the economy at large remains in question. For those of us in early and mid-career positions, pressing questions arise. “Will I still have a job? How will my position description change? Will I be prepared? What should I do now to ensure I remain a valuable asset to my university?” It is my purpose in this brief column to identify some of the areas in which changes seem most likely to take place in this new year.
To date, we have made significant progress in developing chatbot-hosted transactional generative AI in which the user inputs questions and answers to the bot. One of the myriad of high-quality examples is the Khan Academy’s Khanmigo. These have been effective in hosting tutors, study apps, curricular design, and much more. The use of generative AI continues to expand in new ways. Meanwhile, the development of AI agents is driving the expansion and efficiency of AI. In the Agentic AI models, we have tools that are capable of reasoned assessment of what is needed accomplish a goal, aligning a series of stacked tasks, and completing those tasks without direct supervision in an efficient way, much like a human assistant would perform a series of tasks to achieve desired outcomes. For example, this often includes data collection, analysis of the data, and identifying and implementing ways in which to accomplish the goals. This opens the possibility that portions of individual position descriptions can be offloaded from humans and combined into Agentic AI duties. This results in fewer overall employees; lower indirect costs such as insurance, vacation, and sick leave; and a more cost-efficient operation. Beginning now, institutions are moving from scattered pilots to governed, agentic workflows that will define the next decade of student success and operational efficiency.
I asked my virtual digital assistant, Gemini 3, on December 28 to suggest some of the implementations we will most likely see broadly implemented to address the student lifecycle. Gemini suggested that the work will be “personalized, proactive and persistent.” Gemini 3 Thinking mode predicted we will see a wide range of implementations in 2026, including:
1. The 24/7 Digital Concierge (Recruitment): Beyond simple FAQs, agents now manage the entire "nurturing funnel," handling complex credit transfer evaluations and scheduling campus tours via multi-channel SMS and web interfaces. Source: 2026 Higher Education Digital Marketing Trends (EducationDynamics)
2. Socratic Tutors for Every Learner: AI tutors that don’t just give answers but engage in Socratic dialogue, scaffolding difficult concepts and generating infinite practice problems based on real-time course performance. Source: AI Tutors and the Human Data Workforce 2026 Guide (HeroHunt)
3. Mental Health "First Responders": AI agents serving as low-barrier triage points, offering immediate coping strategies for anxiety and seamlessly escalating high-risk cases to human counselors. Source: How AI Chatbots Are Transforming Student Services (Boundless Learning)
4. Predictive Intervention for "Gatekeeper" Courses: Using "behavioral trace data" from LMS platforms to identify students struggling in high-risk introductory courses (e.g., College Algebra, Gen Chem) before the first midterm. Source: Predictive Analytics in Higher Ed: Promises and Challenges (AIR)
5. Admissions Document Verification Agents: Autonomous systems that verify international credentials, flag missing forms, and check for eligibility in milliseconds, reducing the "time-to-decision" from weeks to minutes. Source: AI Agents for Universities: Automating Admissions (Supervity)
Gemini 3 Thinking mode continued with examples of back-office efficiencies that AI will provide universities that are early adopters of an Agentic AI approach:
6. Automated University Accounting: AI agents that handle invoice processing, general ledger coding, and "smart" expense management, ensuring policy compliance without manual entry. Source: 5 Use Cases for AI Agents in Finance (Centric Consulting)
7. Grant Management & Writing Assistants: Agents that scan federal databases (Grants.gov) to match faculty research with funding, draft initial narratives, and manage post-award financial reporting. Source: AI Grant Management: Driving Efficiency (Fluxx AI)
8. Dynamic Enrollment Marketing Agents: "Search Everywhere Optimization" (GEO/AEO) tools that ensure the university appears in AI-generated "best of" lists and voice-search results on platforms like TikTok and Reddit. Source: Transitioning to the Agentic University 2026–27 (UPCEA)
9. Procurement & Spend Analysis: Agents that continuously monitor contract compliance and supplier health, identifying "hidden" savings that can be reallocated to student scholarships. Source: How AI Agents Change Procurement Work in 2026 (Suplari)
10. Regulatory Reporting & Audit Agents: Systems that auto-generate audit-ready reports for state and federal compliance, reducing the administrative burden on IR (Institutional Research) offices. Source: FINRA 2026 Oversight Report: The Reckoning for Autonomous AI (Snell & Wilmer)
11. HR & Benefits Support: 24/7 staff-facing agents that answer complex questions about leave policies, payroll, and benefits, freeing HR staff for strategic culture-building work. Source: Agentic AI: Top Tech Trend of 2025/2026 (Gartner/EAB)
12. The "AI-First" Curriculum Redesign: Moving beyond academic integrity to "AI Fluency" as a graduation standard, where agents help faculty redesign assessments to focus on process rather than product. Source: 2026 Predictions for AI in Higher Education (Packback)
Of course, there will be many comparable efficiencies implemented in other areas of universities. These are examples that demonstrate the cost and time efficiencies that can be realized through thoughtful implementation of Agentic AI. In the November 12th issue of this column, I detail an approach to begin the administrative Agentic AI transition, “Transitioning to the Agentic University 2026-27.”
Online: Trending Now: https://www.insidehighered.com/opinion/blogs/online-trending-now
Link to Unanticipated presentation: https://sites.google.com/view/unanticipated/home/
Link to Ray's EduAI Advisor: https://chatgpt.com/g/g-pLDOh2PHk-ray-s-eduai-advisor
Link to Ray Schroeder Brief CV https://bit.ly/44ZHlu9