Could Tech Sovereignty Free Higher Ed From Big Tech?

At Inside Higher Ed’s U.S. Universities and Colleges Summit this week, presidents and chancellors described artificial intelligence as “confusing” and “chaotic” but also as “an opportunity.” Some admitted they had no policies to guide them. One president said they were bracing for the “grief” and “sense of loss” of human interaction as AI automation in campus operations becomes inevitable. Another president described the tension between students’ concerns about AI’s environmental damage and the enormous AI-driven advancements in lifesaving cancer research.

But just keeping up with the rapid pace of change leaves little room for leaders to truly wrestle with the fundamental questions about AI in higher ed. Like many of us, several presidents are struggling with the ethics of AI when only a handful of AI companies dictate its future. Higher ed is putting its credibility behind the big tech companies, one leader said. “We are creating the future we fear,” but “I feel we have no choice but to participate in that,” they said. In the absence of a clear “least bad actor,” their solution is to not fully commit to one AI platform. Even still, the leader doubted its impact: “I don’t know if there’s really space between our choices,” they said.

One compelling pitch to escape that bind is for higher ed to pursue digital sovereignty. Broadly speaking, digital sovereignty is when institutions minimize their reliance on monolithic technology companies by increasing their own capacities and capabilities to build systems. Higher ed has struggled to recruit and retain tech talent given the allure of private sector salaries, so it’s a steep curve. But the reward could be that higher ed frees itself from the black box of big-tech systems and lowers its costs.

Even technology leaders are increasingly talking about digital sovereignty, judging from the discussions at last month’s Educause conference. Several technology officers shared ways to take back control over their institution’s digital presence and design AI strategies for “mission-driven institutions.” One session featured leaders who built AI “on their own terms.”

The husband-and-wife team Matt and Tara Hughes, both working in the Cal State system, made the case most clearly at Educause. They outlined ways institutions can move from vendor dependence to digital sovereignty. Part of the problem they see is customer capture—when tech vendors build moats around their products, making it difficult if not impossible for institutions to leave or connect with other solutions.

The Hugheses used the Franco-German Joint Paper on Digital Sovereignty, released over the summer, as their reference point. That document presented a blueprint for strengthening Europe’s ability to act independently and have greater agency over digital technologies. So how does this apply to higher ed? The Hugheses encouraged technology officers to embrace the spirit of the report by regaining control of their data, infrastructure, governance, talent and technology. Institutions can look to open-source tools and code to build new systems. And AI can help multiply the efforts of lean teams, they argued.

Most importantly, they urged institutions to collaborate with each other and the “right” vendors. Digital sovereignty will be a gamble, they acknowledged; open-source coding poses risks, and many colleges don’t have the right tech expertise and skills in house, so they will need to be careful not to become overly reliant on AI. “Open source won’t have the fanciest booth at the conference,” Matt Hughes said, “but the most important thing is to share with the community.”

At least one institution says it’s already made the leap. Syracuse University has claimed “AI sovereignty” through its partnership with an “AI-agnostic” platform that allows institutions to jump from one LLM to another as pricing and terms change. Syracuse owns the data, the code and the infrastructure and said it’s used the platform to develop agent-driven processes and build student-experience tools. Along with the independence to “shape the road map around its students’ needs rather than a vendor’s road map,” the institution says it’s kept AI expenses 85 percent below what other software solutions would have cost.

Tech sovereignty won’t be the answer for every institution. It requires skills and resources many institutions don’t have. But as AI continues to race ahead, the concept offers leaders choice. Even a small move toward autonomy over tech platforms is a move toward having a say in where this technology goes.