Opinion

MORNING GLORY: The best case for AI? Let it decide who gets into college

An AI-driven process transparent to outside evaluators could rebuild trust in an increasingly controversial system

By Hugh Hewitt Fox News

Published September 22, 2026 5:00am EDT

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There is a debate about whether the widespread adoption and application of artificial intelligence models will cost jobs, and if so, in which industries.

If some obvious employment categories can be identified as ripe for replacement by AI, patterns should emerge about which sorts of jobs are in immediate peril.

One obvious candidate for replacement by AI is the staff of admissions offices at the nation’s colleges and universities. There are not enormous numbers of these positions, but there are excellent reasons to put AI to work in those offices, and not just to save money in the budgets of increasingly beleaguered schools.

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The College and University Professional Association for Human Resources released a study in April 2023 of 12,042 admissions employees at 940 institutions. On average, there were more than a dozen admissions staff members at every institution. There are more than 4,000 degree-granting institutions in the U.S., so a workforce of at least 40,000 is a reasonable estimate of the size of one group AI is coming for. (Even at the institutions where cost-cutting pressure is highest, there will still be a need for a couple of admissions officers, so don’t project a 100% loss of jobs here.)

Why the focus on the staffs of admissions offices?

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Because the college and graduate application process is driven by paper and numbers: test scores, GPAs, essays,........

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