Jung Da-hyun is a reporter at The Korea Times, covering social issues in Korea, including foreign residents, education, environment and politics. Driven by a deep interest in people’s stories, she focuses on investigative and feature reporting through direct interviews and field coverage. She received the Amnesty International Korea Media Award for her “Deepfake Crisis at Schools” series. Reach her at dahyun08@koreatimes.co.kr. Always open to hearing your stories.
INTERVIEW King's calls on universities to rethink essence of learning in AI era
King’s College London Vice-Chancellor and President Shitij Kapur / Courtesy of King’s College London
By Jung Da-hyun
Institution shifts from cognitive to experiential learning to cultivate human judgment, real-world skills
Editor’s note
This is the second in a series of interviews as The Korea Times speaks with leading university presidents across the globe to examine how institutions are redefining education, research and international collaboration in an era shaped by artificial intelligence, demographic shifts and geopolitical uncertainty. The series is supported by the Korea Press Foundation's Press Promotion Fund.
LONDON — As artificial intelligence (AI) rapidly reshapes higher education, universities face a challenge that goes far beyond simply bringing the technology into classrooms. King’s College London Vice-Chancellor and President Professor Shitij Kapur argues that the more fundamental task is to rethink the very nature of learning itself.
“Universities need to look beyond how to use AI and ask what the essence of learning should be when machines can increasingly perform many of the cognitive tasks students have traditionally been trained to do,” Kapur said in an interview with The Korea Times.
Rather than treating AI primarily as a challenge to academic integrity, he said universities should focus on whether traditional models of education — largely built around acquiring and demonstrating knowledge — are still sufficient in a world where machines can perform many cognitive tasks.
That requires a shift in emphasis from knowledge-based learning toward experiences that develop students’ ability to apply what they know in real-world settings.
“The big shift is from cognitive to experiential,” Kapur said. “The cognitive will not go away. It’s the relative balance.”
Universities have traditionally placed greater emphasis on cognitive learning, with students expected to acquire knowledge and demonstrate their understanding through essays and examinations. While that foundation will remain important, Kapur said AI is shifting the balance toward experiential learning.
That means giving students more opportunities to apply their knowledge in real-world settings, where skills such as judgment, collaboration and problem-solving become increasingly important.
“Cognitive (learning) was in some sense very easy because we knew how to teach it and we knew how to test it,” Kapur said. “Experiential is more complex, and we’ll have to develop new pedagogies.”
The shift also reflects changing expectations in what employers expect from graduates. Kapur said skills once associated with more senior roles, such as human judgment, leadership and interpersonal communication, are increasingly being expected of graduates from the outset of their careers.
“Just having PowerPoint skills and the ability to write a good essay is not enough,” he said. “Employers want to know how you will work in teams, how you will exercise human judgment and how you will demonstrate leadership.”
Researchers in a laboratory at King's College London / Courtesy of King's College London
Rethinking assessment in AI era
The rapid spread of generative AI has forced universities to grapple with new questions over academic integrity, particularly how to address its use in assignments and assessments. Kapur, however, said focusing too heavily on cheating risks overlooking the broader changes AI is bringing to education.
King’s College London was among the first wave of universities to introduce guidelines permitting the use of generative AI within defined boundaries. But with the technology advancing rapidly, Kapur said those rules must continually evolve alongside it.
Early guidelines required students to show their reasoning to demonstrate that the work was their own. But as AI models have become capable of producing step-by-step reasoning, such measures have become increasingly difficult to rely on.
“Detection mechanisms are not very good and there are lots of false positives,” Kapur said. “We give students clear guidance, but every six months or a year, that guidance changes, and it will keep changing.”
One response would be to return to traditional closed examinations in which students write answers without access to digital tools. While such assessments may still have a place, Kapur described relying on them as a response to AI as “backward looking.”
Instead, he said universities should take a more forward-looking approach by redesigning education around how students can work effectively with AI while adding distinctly human value.
King’s law school offers one example of that approach. Rather than limiting students’ exposure to AI, the school has introduced professional-grade tools used by law firms into its curriculum, giving students hands-on experience with the technology before entering the workplace.
The goal, Kapur said, is not simply to teach students how to use the tools, but to help them critically assess their strengths and limitations and understand how they can be used ethically and without bias.
“We cannot have a world where we say we only teach you the traditional knowledge and then tell you to figure out the rest on your own,” he said. “Industry expects these students to come prepared to deal with the world as it is.”
View of a King’s College London campus building in London / Courtesy of King’s College London
Bringing AI across disciplines
King’s is also exploring how AI can be integrated across disciplines rather than treating it primarily as a field of computer science.
The university has recruited 20 scholars who apply AI in fields ranging from medicine and law to the social sciences. By bringing them together through its AI institute, Kapur said King’s aims to build a “circle of knowledge” that draws on diverse academic perspectives instead of concentrating AI expertise among engineers and computer scientists.
Experiments are already underway across campus. The music department, for example, has incorporated an AI agent into an orchestra and used machine learning to generate new symphonies, exploring how the technology could reshape performance, audience experience and artistic agency
King’s also plans to introduce a master’s program in “AI for the sciences” and a bachelor’s program combining philosophy and AI, reflecting its push to examine the technology across disciplines.
Students study in a library at King’s College London. Courtesy of King’s College London
While industry is likely to lead the development of AI technology itself, Kapur said universities have a distinct role in examining its broader implications.
“When it comes to the interdisciplinary implications, the university should lead,” he said.
Kapur said universities must also protect the slow, reflective nature of scholarship amid AI’s growing ability to accelerate intellectual work.
He recalled spending about a year conducting a literature review for his doctorate — a task he said AI could now accomplish in hours. But greater speed, he cautioned, does not necessarily produce deeper understanding.
“While you can replace the output of a year's worth of literature review in less than a day, you have not developed any of the breadth of perspective and critical judgement that the year of work entailed,” he said. “One cannot confuse the output with the purpose and we will need to be careful in incorporating AI into research training.”
More broadly, Kapur said AI could reshape not only education and work, but how people understand what it means to be human.
“It’s not only an industrial revolution,” he said. “It is actually a rethinking of our sense of self.”
Graphic by Bae So-young