Generative AI and Academic Identity in Higher Education: Student Development, Faculty Expertise, and the Purpose of University Learning

The arrival of capable Generative AI tools has not simply created a new set of classroom challenges. It has placed a foundational question back at the center of higher education: what are students actually developing when they complete academic work, and what does it mean to transmit and acquire expertise when fluent, plausible output can be generated without understanding?This is, before it is a question of policy or assessment, a question about knowledge, identity, and human development. What is a student building - intellectually, professionally, as a thinker - as they move through a degree? What does a faculty member bring to teaching when the work of explaining, arguing, and synthesizing might be delegated to a system? These questions were always implicit in higher education; Generative AI has made them unavoidable.We frame this deliberately as an open inquiry. Whether, and to what extent, AI can genuinely automate the cognitive and developmental work that higher education cultivates is itself contested - and we welcome contributions that challenge as well as those that assume it. The collection is anchored in several theoretical traditions that prospective authors are encouraged to engage: epistemic cognition, communities of practice, identity development, the philosophy of education, and the sociology of knowledge. Work that brings these or adjacent perspectives to bear will help the collection move beyond surface description toward deeper conceptual engagement.We invite contributions addressing, but not limited to:• Student Learning, Cognition, and Development. How does AI-mediated academic work shape disciplinary thinking, writing, and reasoning? What might students gain or lose, and how does this vary across disciplines, backgrounds, and stages of study?• Academic Identity and Intellectual Agency. How are students and faculty renegotiating what it means to author an argument, own an idea, or call something their own - and how does this shape their developing sense of themselves as thinkers and knowledge-makers?• Faculty Expertise and the Meaning of Academic Work. What is at stake for faculty - professionally and epistemically - when AI can simulate the outputs of disciplinary expertise?• Epistemic Judgment and Disciplinary Knowledge. How do students and faculty develop the capacity to critically evaluate AI-generated content within the norms and standards of their disciplines?• Authorship, Knowledge, and the Purpose of Higher Education. What is a university education for, and how should assumptions about originality, contribution, and the formation of expertise be reconsidered?The collection’s center of gravity is conceptual and developmental rather than operational. Research focused on institutional governance, policy, assessment redesign, or the mechanics of tool integration is nonetheless welcome where it engages substantively with these broader questions - examining practical issues through the lens of expertise, intellectual agency, epistemic judgment, or disciplinary knowledge. We welcome original empirical research, theoretical and conceptual papers, systematic reviews, disciplinary case studies, and critical essays, and we especially encourage work that centers student and faculty voices and addresses the normative question of what higher education is for. Topic editors: Paula Lauren, Bruce Maxim Source: https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/82202/generative-ai-and-academic-identity-in-higher-education-student-development-faculty-expertise-and-the-purpose-of-university-learning