Think-Piece: The Rise of the Chatbot Professor
By Christof Royer
Image: Christof Royer
It may seem like a paradox: the university has been simultaneously shaken by the arrival of large language models (LLMs) and quick to welcome them. On the one hand, there has been the predictable panic over effortless cheating and the erosion of academic standards; on the other, it is striking how rapidly these technologies have become tools for drafting feedback, developing teaching materials, or supporting student learning. One explanation for this tension, to be sure, is the defeatist refrain that “the genie is out of the bottle.” But this seemingly pragmatic position obscures a more uncomfortable continuity. Higher education had become structurally compatible with the chatbot long before machines learned to speak. The genie merely fulfils a promise – distinction without judgment, recognition without the risk of failure – universities had begun making when they increasingly mapped themselves onto what Christopher Lasch famously called a “culture of narcissism” (1979).
For Lasch, the culture of narcissism was a condition of chronic insecurity and compulsive dependence on external affirmation. “The narcissist depends on others to validate his self-esteem,” Lasch writes. “He cannot live without an admiring audience” (1979: 10-11). The narcissistic personality was a product of the rise of the culture industry, but was paradoxically further entrenched by an accompanying therapy culture. By replacing judgment and social critique with emotional management and self-esteem maintenance, therapeutic culture produced individuals ever more dependent on reassurance, guidance, and affirmation from external authorities. Importantly, Lasch’s point was not to lament the human need for recognition; it was that this new cultural constellation traded recognition for attention. While the former inevitably entails judgment, the latter treats judgment as a threat; while the former is grounded in deeds, character, and achievement, the latter is oriented toward personality, image, or vibe. The narcissistic individual thus desires a form of recognition without judgment. However, the tragedy, as Lasch saw it, is that attention cannot fully replace recognition. This leads to a situation in which the individual’s demand for psychological safety that shields them from the risk of judgment pushes them ever deeper into anxiety because they receive no recognition capable of settling the question of self-worth. The result is a deeply unstable subject trapped in a vicious cycle of demand for further affirmation without ever finding it sufficient.
The solution to this problem seems clear enough: the culture of narcissism needs to turn its institutions into sites for recognition without risk. Lasch himself noticed that a privileged site to observe this transformation is the university (1979: 127, 148). The 1970s saw the launching of the attack on the traditional view of higher education as a place where professors impart wisdom to passive students. Today, the “sponge model” has fallen decisively out of fashion. In its place, students are now framed as active knowledge creators, as equal conversation partners, as co-producers of meaning. To be clear, this is by no means a bad development. Few would seriously argue for a return to a rigidly hierarchical system in which students are expected to absorb their professor’s wisdom uncritically. But the transformation did not—and could not—stop there. As universities become ever more deeply integrated into neoliberal systems of measurement, educational success needs to be quantified through metrics such as student satisfaction, engagement, and retention. The result is not merely that professors are continuously evaluated by students, but that they are evaluated primarily according to how students feel about them. Teaching becomes a form of service provision. And the service to be provided is the affirmation of students’ intelligence and sense of worth. Their reward, in a curious quid pro quo, is favourable feedback in student evaluations—and rosier career prospects.
It becomes necessary, therefore, to turn yourself into what one former academic described as a “teaching teddy bear”: “if students want a stapler (or a Kleenex) and you don’t have one, apologize” (Sacks, 1996: 75). Play the game. Award high marks. Emphasize effort over outcome. Reassure students of their potential, their originality, even their brilliance. Unsurprisingly, grade inflation has followed, not only in private institutions but also in public and so-called elite universities. Students no longer fight over passing or failing, but over distinctions and As. The reassurance of excellence becomes a demand. This is why feedback must be carefully sugar-coated. It must be constructive, supportive, and, above all, emphasize the student’s potential. Heed the institutional message: everyone has the intellectual capacity to thrive at university. And if they do not, the problem most likely lies not with the student but with the professor, the system, the assessment criteria, the learning environment, mental health pressures, invisible barriers, or (isn’t it ironic?) capitalism.
It is only logical that in such a system, “engagement” becomes the uncritically accepted lodestar. Certainly, education experts assure us that student engagement is vital for learning, that it supports the acquisition and retention of knowledge and skills. In truth, engagement functions as a proxy for happiness: only engaged students are satisfied students, and only satisfied students stay (and pay). This creates an academic culture in which the cardinal sin of the teacher is failing to motivate, failing to engage students. Education becomes, in Lasch’s words, “enlightened consumption,” an experience the teacher must be careful not to spoil.
The educational system, then, has mapped itself onto the culture of narcissism by bringing affirmation and recognition closer together. By virtue of its prestige, the university dispenses recognition in the form of feedback, grades, and degrees. This, of course, is not done in the absence of standards; it is explicitly done in the name of standards. But when the metrics that define those standards are student satisfaction and engagement, the result is an academic culture of narcissism: a system organized around affirmation and the avoidance of discomfort. All of this is justified under the banner of “student-centred education”—an educational model that views judgment, let alone failure, with suspicion. The discomfort that accompanies critical thinking thus becomes the bête noire of the university. Achievement becomes superfluous. For why would anyone prove they are brilliant if they are assured that they already are?
This explains why chatbots have found it so easy to transcend the walls of the academy. For they are, in a sense, the most ingenious response to the problem of the culture of narcissism. They provide recognition — through their notorious sycophancy — without the risk of real judgment. They keep their users engaged (the parallel to higher education’s sacred cow is striking here) through a logic of reassurance and comfort: reassurance that almost any idea is framed as promising, and comfort derived from the absence of risk of being contradicted or found wrong. There is nothing but opportunity here – so long, of course, as the user remains engaged. But what, then, is the role of humans who are not structurally designed to flatter?
This problem gives rise to a curious figure that might be called the “chatbot professor”. Facing pressures similar to those shaping chatbots — namely, the imperative to keep students hooked — the creation of an interactive classroom is by no means enough for this teacher. The chatbot professor has understood quickly that what is expected of them is the combination of epistemic authority with the inexhaustible patience, encouragement, and emotional calibration of the machine. The chatbot professor does not care if you join the seminar thirty minutes late — they are happy to see you at all. The chatbot professor does not tell you that a question is silly — for not only are there no silly questions, as the old cliché goes, but your question is always excellent. The chatbot professor naturally responds to virtually every student contribution with adjectives such as brilliant, inspiring, or groundbreaking. Most importantly, the chatbot professor instils a sense of worth in students who struggle academically and discovers ever new incentives for engaging the disengaged. Naturally, students glow under the warmth of so much positive encouragement. Satisfied students, a reassured institution, a student-praised professor— a win-win-win for all parties involved.
All this might sound like a caricature. However, I have observed this pattern across countless student–teacher interactions — including, I should admit, in my own teaching when trying to improve end-of-term evaluation scores. But let me be clear: the argument here is neither a conservative nostalgia for an age of intellectual seriousness nor a form of techno-pessimism claiming that AI spells the death knell of the university. Chatbots, in fact, are a double-edged sword. They certainly mark the culmination of the logic of the culture of narcissism, providing a therapeutic language of recognition without the risk of judgment. Simultaneously, they present universities with a tremendous opportunity to break with this logic. AI-generated content can become the baseline from which genuinely intellectual work begins, a starting point for analysis in the seminar room, essays, and exams, rather than an endpoint. However, this would require a return to a more openly meritocratic vision of higher education in which students thrive only when they produce critical and genuinely original work beyond the run-of-the-mill AI content. It would require the reintroduction of friction, disagreement, and intellectual risk as academic virtues. And, of course, it would require a break with the therapeutic logic of the culture of narcissism. Professors will object that this remains impossible so long as their careers depend upon student satisfaction metrics. Don’t hate the player, hate the (neoliberal) game! Fair enough. However, we – as an academic community – must also ask ourselves whether we can, in the long run, win a game that chatbots are nstructurally designed to play better than us. Otherwise, it is difficult to see how the rise of the chatbot professor does not usher in the demise of the human professor.
References
Lasch, C. (1979) The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing
Expectations. New York: W. W. Norton & Company.
Sacks, P. (1996) Generation X Goes to College: An Eye-Opening Account of Teaching in
Postmodern America. Chicago, IL: Open Court Publishing.
Dr. Christof Royer is an Assistant Professor of Politics and International Relations at Forward College
in Paris. He joined the faculty in 2022, having previously held academic positions at Central European
University, the University of Hong Kong, and the University of St Andrews.
