During the annual EDUCAUSE conference, Google.org announced support for three higher-education initiatives aimed at expanding ethical readiness for the use of artificial intelligence, updating institutional planning, and improving student success. The move comes at a time when 41% of higher-education staff say they have not received formal training in using artificial intelligence tools in learning environments.
The support focuses on institutions facing resource constraints, particularly community colleges and public university systems. Rather than providing a single tool for direct use, the initiatives are tied to developing staff capabilities and testing models that other institutions can replicate.
Better Training to Serve Adult Students
The Coalition of Urban Serving Universities, in partnership with the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities, is developing the Urban Adult Learner Institute. Google.org is supporting the integration of Grow with Google resources and artificial-intelligence-infused lessons into the professional-development certificate program.
The program targets faculty members, advisers, and other higher-education staff, with practical assignments to help them provide better career guidance to adult students. Staff members at 30 universities will test the new training practices, with the goal of identifying approaches that can be replicated at other institutions.
The importance of this pathway stems from a persistent gap in adult learner success. Adult learners have represented at least one-third of higher-education enrollment for decades, but their rate of returning for the second year is 35 percentage points lower than that of traditional-age students.
New Models for Career-Connected Learning
The Coalition of Urban Serving Universities is leading a project to expand career-connected community learning while strengthening its models with artificial intelligence. Over 15 months, the organization will collect qualitative data and analyze 10 models at member institutions, then publish case studies and establish a working group to develop an agenda for research and practice.
The initiative aims to build flexible pathways for work-based learning across multiple academic disciplines, in response to high demand from students and employers for practical training, which is difficult to meet by relying on traditional internships alone.
Rethinking Strategic Planning
As part of the Reimagining Community Colleges initiative, Education Design Lab is helping two-year colleges transform strategic planning from a compliance exercise into a means of supporting innovation and preparing for the future of work. Following a summit for educators and the launch of redesign plans at five colleges, the initiative will launch a national competition in early 2027 to select a statewide community college system to implement a two-year program.
The program will use Education Design Lab’s Future of Learning framework to develop technology-supported solutions that can scale and endure across multiple campuses.
What Is Changing in Practice?
The announcement’s core value is not the provision of a new educational product, but the funding of institutional experiments that combine staff training, model analysis, and the redesign of planning. However, the source does not specify the amount of funding, detailed success metrics, or mechanisms for evaluating the risks of using artificial intelligence. The final results will also depend on what the testing at universities and the projects still in their early stages reveal.