In Wisconsin, Professors Worry AI Could Replace Them

Faculty at the cash-strapped Universities of Wisconsin System are pushing back against a proposed copyright policy they believe would cheapen the relationship between students and their professors and potentially allow artificial intelligence bots to replace faculty members.

For decades, professors have designed and delivered their courses under a policy that says the 25-campus UW System “does not assert a property interest in materials which result from the author’s pursuit of traditional teaching, research, and scholarly activities.” That includes course materials and syllabi, which faculty members own.

It’s an arrangement faculty say is working, not only for themselves but for their students. But now the university is looking to upend that system, they say. Officials proposed a policy this fall that would give the university system the copyright of any instructional materials, including syllabi.

Under the proposed policy, which was first reported by The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel earlier this week, copyright ownership of “scholarly works,” which includes lecture notes, course materials, recordings, journal articles and syllabi, would originate with the UW System, “but is then transferred to the author.” However, the system’s general counsel told faculty Nov. 22, “the UWs reserve a non-exclusive license to use syllabi in furtherance of its business needs and mission.”

That letter from the general counsel was in response to an open letter more than 10 faculty union leaders sent to the UW System administration Nov. 1 opposing the policy change, characterizing the “elimination of faculty ownership of their syllabi, course materials, and other products of their labor” as “a drastic and deeply problematic redefinition of the employment contract between faculty and UW.”

The policy proposal is not yet final and is open for public comment through Dec. 13. It’s unclear what will happen after that, as the UW System did not respond to Inside Higher Ed’s specific questions about the policy approval process or when it may go into effect.

This isn’t the first time faculty have raised concerns about their university trying to take ownership of their digital course materials.

In 2019, Purdue University adopted an intellectual property standard that allowed the university to retain and manage courseware and online modules as commissioned, copyrightable work. But much like what’s happening in Wisconsin now, faculty pushed back, concerned that Purdue could try to claim ownership of lectures and coursework from all of its online courses. In response, the university said it would not reuse or commercialize materials that are commissioned, copyrightable works under the policy without a faculty member’s written consent.

Now, faculty across the UW System are worried that such a policy would allow the UW System to repurpose their original course content to offer online courses—possibly through an overworked adjunct or even an AI-powered proctor—that may become out of date. They’re also worried that, in the age of artificial intelligence, the new policy would allow the UW System to sell course data professors upload to Canvas (the course management system the UW System uses) to train proprietary large language models without their consent.

But Mark Pitsch, director of media relations for the Universities of Wisconsin, said in an email to Inside Higher Ed Wednesday that those fears are overblown.

“There is nothing in this updated policy that is a change in how the Universities of Wisconsin manage copyright for faculty,” he said. “The updated policy simply provides clearer, more specific, and accurate guidance that continues to match current U.S. copyright law while also expanding copyright transfer to non-faculty, including academic staff and students not included in the existing policy.”

‘Corporatization of Academia’

Although specific information about the policy proposal and the public comments in response to it are only accessible to people affiliated with the university system, Inside Higher Ed obtained screenshots of many of the nearly 100 public comments people have already submitted.

The majority don’t support it.

“It would allow any UW campus to fire any employee and nonetheless continue teaching their courses in perpetuity and with no obligation to continue paying the employee for their work,” an anonymous commenter from the University of Wisconsin–La Crosse wrote. “Furthermore, it threatens to dehumanize the UW educational experience by undermining the unique student-faculty relationships that emerge organically at our campuses and replacing them with cookie-cutter online courses graded by low-wage employees or AI robots.”

Another commenter from the University of Wisconsin–Green Bay said that “given the ever-increasing capabilities of generative AI, it is crucial that UWS proscribe the use of AI to create lectures, chatbots or other instructional materials, without the consent of authors,” and called on the UW System to produce “clear, explicit safeguards to insure that UWS does not appropriate the intellectual work of faculty and staff to replace human instructors.”

Natalia Taft, an associate professor of biological sciences at the University of Wisconsin–Parkside who signed the open letter, told Inside Higher Ed that she believes the policy proposal “is part of the trend of the corporatization of academia.”

While academic freedom and student interaction are what attracts many scholars to work for lower pay at universities, she said the proposed policy sends a message that “the powers that be want to have the benefits of that without having to compensate us accordingly, because there is drastic reduction for public education, especially in Wisconsin.”

Declining enrollments over the past several years have put the UW System in a dire financial position. Over the past two years, it’s moved six branch campuses entirely online in an effort to cut costs. And in August, the Universities of Wisconsin Board of Regents voted to lay off 30-plus tenured faculty members and 60 nontenured employees at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee amid a $16.4 million budget deficit.

Despite the UW System’s insistence that the copyright policy change isn’t all that substantial, at least one public commenter from UW–Green Bay believes the proposed policy would hurt the UW System’s enrollment, revenues and reputation even more.

“Philosophically, this policy has the potential to severely impinge on enrollment and faculty retention,” the commenter said. “If students and faculty are required to produce scholarly work and not able to maintain the rights to their work, why would they stay in the system, especially when the definitions of the work are so broadly defined.”

‘A Deficit of Trust’

But declining enrollment isn’t the only factor contributing to the UW System’s budget woes. In December 2023, the Universities of Wisconsin Board of Regents voted to cut spending on its diversity, equity and inclusion programs in exchange for $800 million in funds held hostage by anti-DEI Republican lawmakers.

Jon Shelton, a professor at UW–Green Bay who also signed the open letter criticizing the copyright proposal, told Inside Higher Ed that all of that context makes him skeptical that the UW System is operating in the best interest of its faculty and students.

“They can say it’s just a clerical revision, but it seems to change a lot of things,” he said. “There’s a deficit of trust that automatically lends itself to suspicion.”

He added that the financially hobbled UW System is “constantly trying to have us do more with less.”

Pushing online education, he said, has been a big part of that.

“Given that impetus, it certainly wouldn’t surprise me to see the administration—either now or in the not-so-distant future—try and use AI to provide the things we teach on the cheap to students, thinking it would be a good cost-saving measure,” Shelton said.

The faculty letter Shelton and others signed also argues that the proposed policy would violate the American Association of University Professors’ guidelines on copyright and intellectual property, which “asserts that scholarly work should be protected from being used without their consent.”

But the UW System’s general counsel said in its response letter to faculty that the AAUP’s policies “do not accurately reflect current U.S. copyright law,” citing the Copyright Act of 1976 and noting that it doesn’t include a “teacher exception” to the broader work-for-hire doctrine, “and without policies such as the proposed policy, copyright would be retained solely by the UWs.”

The UW System did not respond to Inside Higher Ed’s request for clarification asking if it is implying that the institution already owns the copyright of such materials.

Jane Ginsburg, a professor of literary and artistic property law at Columbia University School of Law, said the university has the law on its side.

Under the 1976 Copyright Act, “course material prepared by employees, including professors, as part of their jobs comes within the definition of a ‘work made for hire,’ whose copyright vests initially in the employer (the University), not the employee (the professor).”

But legal interpretations aside, she said that what’s happening at the UW System right now gave her “déjà vu” from a similar faculty uproar at Columbia in 2000, when the university considered changing its policy related to faculty ownership of their intellectual property in an effort to bring in revenue from the then-emerging online education market.

While some universities, including the University of Michigan, have long claimed copyright for university-produced works, faculty backlash at Columbia at that time solidified the university’s policy that faculty members hold the copyright to their work.

“One of the impediments to developing online, paid distance education back around 2000 was not only that paid online instruction could undermine the relationship between the professor and the student, but it would also cheapen the value of the Columbia or another university’s in-person degree: Why pay full freight for the in-person degree if you could still get a Columbia degree for a lot less money online?” Ginsburg said.

“It may be one thing to have online continuing education courses,” Ginsburg continued, “but to have some kind of credit-carrying, widely available online AI-assisted course may not actually be in the financial interest of universities whose degree value depends on scarcity.”