When I made the switch from corporate marketing and communications to higher education in January 2024, AI tools were just coming on the scene. I had recently attended a digital marketing conference that explored prompt writing for marketers, and the presenter encouraged us to think of AI as a “personal assistant” or even a substitute for junior-level roles on our teams. The takeaway seemed to be that, if wielded properly, AI could clear the busy work off our desks, help us be more strategic and optimize our teams’ capacities to become multitasking marketing geniuses.
The promise of AI as a productivity tool is alluring, especially in higher education where funding for comms teams can be scarce and hard-won. However, as AI adoption surges on campuses across the country, it’s done little to deliver on that promise. In fact, I would argue that it often adds to the existing workload as marketing and communications teams grapple with the proliferation of AI-generated content and with faculty and staff users seeking (or disregarding) guidance for its usage.
The scope of marketing and communications in higher education is vast. We act as trend forecasters, strategists, designers, web developers, writers, project managers, videographers, content creators, social media managers, digital marketers, brand managers, compliance officers, consultants, public relations specialists—the list goes on. If it can reach an audience, it falls under our purview.
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Most comms teams in higher ed, like mine, serve a staggering array of audiences as well. While in corporate marketing there are customers, employees, the board and strategic partnerships to consider, in higher ed we have prospective, undergraduate, and graduate students; parents and families; alumni; university administrators; campus partners and faculty—not to mention wider audiences like community and corporate partners, government officials and accrediting bodies. The messaging and goals for each of these audiences are necessarily different.
This expansive scope is the thing I’ve wrestled with and come to love most about this field. Like Atlas destined to eternally suspend the sky above the earth, marketing and communications teams bridge the gap between our organizations and the audiences we serve. The responsibility is great, yes, but seeing a campaign land successfully or a new initiative’s message resonate can be equally rewarding. Marketing and communications professionals share the distinct satisfaction in a job well done—the particular “aha” moment of finding the right message, platform and delivery. We carry intention into action and translate meaning from stakeholder expertise to meet audience needs.
Since COVID, the role of communications specifically has been elevated in organizations across multiple industries. The pandemic revealed a principle that communicators have long held as self-evident: Without good communications, organizations cannot function. Suddenly, communicators found themselves in rooms they were rarely invited into previously, relied upon as advisers to deliver updated policies and operational details to internal and external audiences as federal and local guidance vacillated and brick-and-mortar locations shuttered. Internal communications became more important and the “marketing and communications” team became more prevalent on org charts across industries.
The intention and the strategic precision that made communicators so valuable during the pandemic are skills that we hone over the course of our careers and are a significant missing link in AI implementation across campuses today. Even when carefully trained or prompted, AI does not always translate raw information into brand-aligned or appropriate messaging and, without communications backgrounds, many users don’t know how to assess or improve upon that output. Faculty and staff everywhere are suddenly producing their own poorly designed graphics and PowerPoint slides, word-soup web content, and eerie images of students and mascots depicted in “typical” campus scenes. Inaccurate branding and poor writing abound, undermining the professionalism and authority of the users who are relying on these tools to improve their materials. And comms teams have hardly had a chance to establish a unified approach or even general guidance for these eager campus users, as we have been busy trying to incorporate AI into our own production.
If anything, I see AI undermining the partnership between my comms team and our faculty and staff clients. I once had a colleague who used AI for his presentation deck tell me he just needed “something” and assumed that my team was too busy to help. Without consulting us, he both ruled that my team, made up of professionals who are adept at developing targeted materials under tight timelines with accurate information, would not be able to produce what he needed fast enough and that whatever AI could provide him would be better than nothing. After evaluating the AI-generated result, my team had to step in and recreate the deck from scratch within an even tighter deadline than we would have had if he’d reached out to us first. And I can confidently say that even without our intervention, the presentation deck would have been better if he had created it himself without any AI-generated graphics or images.
Marketing and communications teams across the globe—not just in higher ed—have similar stories of AI-generated collateral that, at best, adds to their daily workload and, at worst, can create copyright infringement liabilities and fractured branding for their organizations.
Let me be clear: I am not wholesale condemning the use of AI or disregarding its potential in marketing and communications applications. I am, however, skeptical that AI is the savior we’ve been waiting for to alleviate the strain on our teams’ bandwidth. And I think communicators need a seat at the table when determining guidance for users.
In my own experience, AI has only created more work for my team. The time needed to undo disastrous designs and make them brand-aligned is often greater than the time needed to generate a design from scratch. The same can be said of copy written by AI—I’ve yet to see an AI-generated passage or caption that could be used as-is, even after the lengthy process of crafting and refining prompts. We have effectively equipped every person on campus with their own rocket ship but skipped the aerospace training. As with any powerful tool, proper implementation is key, and communicators offer a unique skillset vital to that implementation.
Just as the COVID-19 pandemic was a catalyst for operational change in organizations, I see the adoption of AI as a disruptor that communications professionals are uniquely qualified to handle. Communicators’ ability to translate raw information—evolving data, federal and state policies, business goals of organizations, leadership concerns—and to present it strategically to specific, human audiences is a skill that cannot be replaced by AI but should be used to inform its implementation and usage on campuses.
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Just as communicators understood the value of effective communications before the pandemic struck, we offer more untapped wisdom as we navigate the political and technological landscape we find ourselves in today. Rather than foisting AI on comms teams to try to optimize their production, ask them what they need to be more effective. Listen to their concerns. Bring them into your AI governance committees. Let them do what they do best—balance heaven and earth seamlessly.
Unlike Atlas, we don’t keep the sky from falling because we’ve been condemned to do so, but because we possess the experience, skills, training and instincts to do it better than anyone, even a machine.