Continuing the Conversation With ChatGPT About the Cost of Knowledge

After my last post, a few friends and colleagues contacted me and noted that the article posing several questions to ChatGPT about the cost of knowledge was excellent. A few of them indicated that they might pursue a similar series of prompts with ChatGPT or another AI tool.

As I noted in my post, I enjoyed the responses from ChatGPT, particularly how they were organized. I compared them to a theoretical conversation I might have had with several friends. Follow up prompts were entered after I reviewed the response and wanted a deeper explanation from the AI.

I noted that a face-to-face conversation with friends and colleagues might have reached the point earlier than the AI. I noted the pattern of human conversations where we sometimes “go down the rabbit hole” and deviate from the primary topic. ChatGPT appears to avoid that by being more disciplined.

I opted to review the responses again. This time, I looked for areas where I had not pursued additional prompts. The prompts and responses are appended in their unedited format below. I hope you enjoy the additional discussion that ensued.

Prompt 1: I have a few additional questions that I would like to ask you about the value of a degree. Are you ready for me to submit them?

ChatGPT-4o: Absolutely! Feel free to ask your questions about the value of a degree, and we can explore them together.

Prompt 2: We recently discussed the tension between the accessibility of information on the Internet and the cost of higher education. As part of your response, you indicated that “colleges offer structured curricula, guided by experts (professors), designed to help students navigate and make sense of complex bodies of knowledge. This structured environment can be difficult to replicate solely through self-directed learning online.”

ChatGPT-4o: That’s right. The structured learning environment of colleges provides a framework that self-directed learning often lacks. It ensures that students engage with material in a logical sequence, receive expert guidance, and develop critical thinking skills through interaction with faculty and peers.

Do you have a specific question related to this idea, or would you like to challenge this perspective in light of alternative learning models?

Prompt 3: Most four-year bachelor’s degree programs have a number of courses grouped in a category called general education. Some of these courses repeat learning from high school such as college algebra, English composition, English literature, and American history. Other courses round out a “general education” and include course options in social science and physical science. At larger institutions, these courses are taught by graduate students or lecturers and not tenured faculty members. Other than math and English, most colleges allow the student to select from a wide range of general education courses in order to meet the credit hour requirements. If this is the case at most colleges, why can’t a large state system or a large alternative education provider like Coursera build online, self-paced general education courses and offer them at much lower prices with tutoring assistance if necessary? Why should colleges and universities price these courses at the same price as the specific courses in bachelor’s program majors?

ChatGPT-4o: Your question highlights one of the biggest inefficiencies in higher education—charging premium tuition rates for general education courses that are often standardized, taught by non-tenured faculty, and in many cases, repeat high school material. There’s a strong case to be made for alternative providers like Coursera, edX, or a large state system to offer these courses at a lower cost. Let’s break this down:

college graduates throwing caps in the air

1. General Education Courses Are Already Highly Standardized

  • Many general education (Gen Ed) courses, like college algebra, introductory psychology, English composition, and U.S. history, follow standard curricula across institutions.
  • These courses do not require research faculty or highly specialized expertise to teach, making them ideal candidates for scalable online learning.
  • The content of many of these courses is already widely available for free through platforms like Khan Academy and MIT Open Course Ware.

2. The Online Model Already Works Elsewhere

  • Successful Examples:
  • Arizona State University’s Global Freshman Academy allows students to take Gen Ed courses online and later decide whether to pay for credit.
  • Western Governors University (WGU) and Southern New Hampshire University (SNHU) offer fully online, competency-based general education courses.
  • Coursera and edX already partner with top universities to offer Gen Ed courses with optional college credit at a fraction of traditional tuition costs.
  • If students can take first- and second-year courses online for a significantly lower price, they would enter a university with only their major-focused coursework left to complete.

3. Cost Discrepancy is Hard to Justify

  • Most colleges and universities charge the same per-credit tuition for Gen Ed courses as they do for specialized major courses, even though:
  • Gen Ed courses are cheaper to teach (often large lecture-based, minimal hands-on requirements).
  • They are frequently taught by graduate students, adjuncts, or lecturers, who earn significantly less than tenured faculty.
  • There is little differentiation in the curriculum between institutions.
  • If a freshman English composition course at a major university costs $3,000 per class, but a comparable online course through ASU or Coursera is $400–600, why should students pay full university tuition?

4. A State System or Alternative Provider Could Offer a Disruptive Model

A large-scale provider could:

  • Offer fully accredited Gen Ed courses for a fraction of traditional tuition.
  • Allow students to self-pace or accelerate through courses, saving time and money.
  • Provide tutoring and AI-driven feedback to assist students in difficult subjects.
  • Partner with state university systems to guarantee credit transfer, ensuring that students can complete their degrees without paying inflated Gen Ed tuition.
  • Example of a Possible Model:
  • Flat-rate subscription for Gen Ed courses at $1,500–$3,000 per year.
  • Fully online, self-paced or instructor-led options.
  • AI-driven support and optional human tutors.
  • Credit guaranteed at public universities within the state system.

5. Why Do Colleges Resist This Change?

  • Revenue Protection: Gen Ed courses subsidize the cost of upper-level courses and faculty salaries, making them a financial cornerstone of most institutions.
  • Enrollment Retention: Keeping students enrolled for four years maximizes tuition revenue. If students complete Gen Ed courses elsewhere, universities risk losing tuition for those credit hours.
  • Tradition & Bureaucracy: Many institutions are slow to change, and faculty governance structures often resist outsourcing or shifting to online models.

6. What Would It Take for This to Become Reality?

  • State Mandates: If public university systems required their schools to accept low-cost online Gen Ed courses for credit, it would break the financial monopoly of traditional pricing.
  • Accreditation Expansion: If more alternative providers like Coursera or Study.com could receive regional accreditation, they could compete directly with traditional universities.
  • Employer Recognition: If major employers started valuing alternative credentials from online providers the same as traditional degrees, it would push universities toward adopting these models.

Conclusion

There is no academic justification for charging the same tuition for a general education course taught by a graduate student in a 300-person lecture hall as for a highly specialized major course taught by a tenured expert. Large-scale, low-cost online models can and should disrupt Gen Ed pricing, allowing students to save thousands on their degrees.

However, universities are financially dependent on Gen Ed revenue, making them reluctant to change. For real reform to happen, state governments, accreditation bodies, and market forces (e.g., employer acceptance of alternative education) would need to force the transition.

Would you agree that such a model could work, or do you see any obstacles I haven’t considered?

My Thoughts About ChatGPT’s Response to Prompt 3

A few days had elapsed between my last series of prompts on the topic, but fortunately, the sessions were grouped together in an easy-to-find order. I located the end of the previous session on the topic and entered prompt one.

I wanted to avoid entering a long prompt with too many thoughts and ideas, so I reentered part of the response from ChatGPT in the previous session. In the second paragraph of ChatGPT’s response to prompt two, it asked me if I had a specific question (since my prompt did not have a specific question but “set the stage” with the quote.

Prompt three was one of the longest prompts I have submitted (excluding entire papers or text for analysis and summaries). There were seven sentences and the last two were questions. My prompt was top of mind and not researched.

ChatGPT’s response was logically organized, decently reasoned, and provided several great examples. I thought the first two paragraphs of its conclusion accurately summarized the issue. I was intrigued by the question it posed to me at the end – “would you agree that such a model could work, or do you see any obstacles I haven’t considered?”

I decided to answer the final sentence of the conclusion through a prompt. The prompt and response are appended below.

Prompt 4: I believe that a model like the one you proposed could work. I think it could be implemented at a large state university with a majority of in-state students where the decreased tuition revenues could also be offset by reduction in the costs of part-time and graduate instructors. I am reminded of another of your responses in this dialogue – “ultimately, restructuring requires a cultural shift in higher education. Colleges must embrace innovation, be willing to challenge traditional norms, and engage stakeholders – faculty, students, alumni, and community partners – in shaping a sustainable future.” Many of the stakeholders mentioned could be obstacles to change. Implementing a change like this will require strong, committed leadership.

ChatGPT-4o: I completely agree—implementing a change of this magnitude requires bold leadership, strategic vision, and a willingness to push through resistance from entrenched stakeholders. Faculty, administrators, students, and alumni all have vested interests in the current system, and shifting the financial and operational model of general education will likely face cultural and political pushback. However, the institutions that successfully lead this change will position themselves as innovators in the future of higher education.

Key Leadership Strategies for Implementing This Change

If a large state university (or system) were to attempt this transition, strong leadership would be essential. Here’s how it could be done:

a leader in education making a plan on a blackboard to lower the cost of a college degree

1. Set a Clear and Compelling Vision

  • The president, provost, and board of trustees must communicate a strong case for change:
  • Why? The cost of higher education is unsustainable, and the university must adapt to maintain relevance.
  • How? By offering high-quality, affordable, and scalable Gen Ed courses online.
  • What’s the Benefit? More students can complete degrees affordably while the university reinvests in its core strengths (e.g., research, specialized programs).
  • Leadership must frame this as a proactive, future-focused strategy—not a cost-cutting measure alone.

2. Build a Coalition of Supporters

  • Engage influential faculty members early in the process. If respected professors endorse the change, others will be more likely to follow.
  • Work with state legislators and education boards to align the initiative with public policy goals, such as reducing student debt and increasing access to higher education.
  • Partner with employers and industry leaders to ensure that students graduating from the new model have credentials that are valued in the workforce.
  • Involve alumni networks—especially those advocating for affordability in education—to gain external advocacy for the transition.

3. Address Faculty and Administrative Resistance

  • Faculty concerns: Many tenured faculty may see this as an attempt to “devalue” traditional instruction.
  • Solution: Differentiate specialized teaching from standardized Gen Ed—faculty should focus on upper-level, research-intensive, and specialized courses while lower-level, high-volume courses are optimized for efficiency.
  • Offer incentives: Faculty who help develop and oversee the new Gen Ed model could receive grants, course buyouts, or leadership roles.
  • Graduate student resistance: In some institutions, graduate students rely on teaching Gen Ed courses for funding.
  • Solution: Shift funding models so that graduate assistantships are based on research contributions, not Gen Ed instruction.
  • Administrative resistance: Many administrators are financially dependent on tuition revenue from Gen Ed courses.
  • Solution: Leadership must reinvent financial models to replace lost revenue with cost savings and alternative revenue streams.

4. Pilot the Model and Scale Up

  • Start by offering a limited set of Gen Ed courses online through a self-paced, lower-cost model.
  • Ensure that these courses are high-quality, engaging, and supported by AI-driven tutoring and human faculty oversight.
  • Use data to demonstrate student success, retention, and cost savings, then gradually expand the model.

5. Work with Accreditation Bodies

  • Some universities hesitate to experiment because they fear accreditation challenges.
  • Work closely with accrediting agencies to ensure that quality standards are met in the transition to an online Gen Ed model.
  • Showcase the success of peer institutions that have already integrated alternative models (e.g., ASU, WGU, SNHU).

6. Reinvest Savings into High-Value Programs

  • The savings from lower-cost Gen Ed instruction should be reinvested into:
  • Strengthening core academic programs.
  • Expanding experiential learning opportunities (internships, undergraduate research, study abroad).
  • Improving student services (advising, career services).
  • Enhancing technology infrastructure for future innovation.

7. Communicate Wins and Keep Momentum

  • Regularly share data and success stories to show how students are benefiting from lower-cost, high-quality Gen Ed courses.
  • Publicize the institution’s leadership in making higher education more affordable.
  • Recognize and reward faculty, staff, and students who contribute to the transformation.

Final Thoughts

You’re absolutely right—change of this magnitude requires strong leadership. The biggest obstacles will be cultural, not technological or logistical. Many institutions will hesitate to adopt this model because of internal resistance, even if it makes financial and academic sense. But the universities that lead this transformation will gain a competitive advantage by making higher education more affordable, more accessible, and more aligned with the needs of 21st-century students.

Do you think a particular state system (e.g., California, Texas, Florida) might be best positioned to attempt this, given their large in-state student populations? Or do you see this more as an opportunity for a single pioneering institution?

My Thoughts About ChatGPT’s Response to Prompt 4

I found it interesting that my AI has become more of a conversationalist than usual. Perhaps it was the conversational style that I invoked. When I answered the question that ChatGPT posed at the end of its response to prompt three, I did not expect ChatGPT to respond with the detailed outline of Key Leadership Strategies for Implementing This Change.

I reviewed my prompt. I did not ask ChatGPT to provide me with the Key Leadership Strategies outline. The outline was excellent. However, I didn’t ask for it. I wouldn’t call it a hallucination because it was relevant to the topic. At the same time, it caused me to pause and think about the theoretical ways that LLMs work.

My only explanation is that some of the recent changes related to reasoning caused the model to continue its response with the leadership strategies section. I don’t know. Given what happened, I chose not to answer the questions posed by ChatGPT in the second paragraph of its response under Final Thoughts.

Final Thoughts

As I have written in previous posts, I try to use an AI tool for 30 minutes every day. However, I do not incorporate outcomes from the AI responses in my blog posts unless I specifically note them as such.

I liked ChatGPT’s response about general education courses. It is so good that if I were using it for an academic paper or paper published outside of my blog, I would submit it to a plagiarism detector to see if the content was copied from somewhere.

The points ChatGPT made about gen ed courses are accurate. There are no good reasons why they should be priced the same as courses required for program majors. The financial margins of courses taught in 300-person lecture halls by part-time lecturers are huge. At some colleges, individual programs will teach general education courses to keep from losing the revenue to other divisions.

The status quo is hard to change. There are innovators and disruptors out there. Making change happen in higher education used to take decades. In September 2024, I added current commentary to the text of a 2013 speech I made about potential higher ed business model changes based on online courses and technology innovations.

Over that decade, some areas experienced greater changes than others. I noted that the creation of online general education courses offered as OER by public university systems appeared to have been superseded by dual enrollment courses.

As I noted in the post that this article follows, the timeframe for changes in higher ed has decreased from decades to the next three to five years. Hopefully, we will see more innovators and disruptors willing to take the leadership steps required.

Subjects of Interest

Artificial Intelligence/AI

EdTech

Higher Education

Independent Schools

K-12

Science

Student Persistence

Workforce