From AI Use to Funding Cuts: How Provosts Navigate 2026

As artificial intelligence continues to disrupt college campuses, chief academic officers are embracing AI tools. Roughly seven in 10 provosts use AI in their own day-to-day work at least once per week, according to Inside Higher Ed’s latest survey of CAOs—but only one in 10 reported their institution has a centralized AI strategy.

Provosts report that AI has most delivered value to their institution in the form of individual productivity gains (39 percent said this) and administrative efficiency (36 percent), which is reflected in how they most often use the technology. Seventy-one percent of provosts use AI to summarize documents and reports, 66 percent for presentations and meetings, and 65 percent to draft communications to faculty, staff or students. One survey respondent noted they receive more than 100 emails per day and use AI to “identify high-priority action items” in their inbox. Others said they use AI to help source data from other institutions, for calendar analysis, grant development and organizing higher ed news.

Inside Higher Ed’s 2026 Survey of College and University Chief Academic Officers, released today, includes responses from 376 CAOs at mostly public and private nonprofit, two- and four-year institutions who were polled in July and August. In addition to taking their pulse on AI, Inside Higher Ed and Hanover Research asked provosts about the rapidly changing federal and state policy landscape; tenure, shared governance and academic freedom; faculty and staff retention; and academic program health and institutional effectiveness, among other topics.

Most of the presidents I know would either publicly agree or confidentially agree, the provost has the hardest job in higher ed.”

—Paul LeBlanc, former university president and author of Reclaiming Purpose: The University in an AI World

Paul LeBlanc, former president of Southern New Hampshire University and author of the new book Reclaiming Purpose: The University in an AI World, said he was not surprised to see that so many provosts now utilize AI tools in their own work.

“Most of the presidents I know would either publicly agree or confidentially agree, the provost has the hardest job in higher ed,” he said. Indeed, fewer than half of CAOs—47 percent—said they have adequate resources to implement initiatives in their role.

“If you think of the sheer volume of information the provost typically has to process in a given week, it’s enormous,” LeBlanc said. “So, from an information-management perspective, you can see why [AI] would be very appealing.”

For most provosts, AI’s clearest returns end with their own personal use; only 12 percent of respondents said that institutional AI investment has resulted in department workflow optimization, and only 8 percent reported “institutionwide operational transformation.” Fifteen percent of all provosts—and 28 percent of provosts at private nonprofit baccalaureate institutions—said their institution hasn’t invested in AI at all.

This discrepancy is in part due to the way people most often use AI, LeBlanc said.

“When you bolt AI onto existing workflows, there is limited impact,” he said. “When you use AI to rethink how the work happens, then you get more profound impacts … I don’t think there are a lot of universities that are deploying AI in that way, where they’re rethinking the whole system.”

One in five provosts agreed or strongly agreed that their institution has a coherent vision for how AI will change what it teaches and how to teach that. Thirty-one percent of public doctoral provosts agreed with this, while only 11 percent of private nonprofit baccalaureate provosts and 12 percent of community college provosts did.

Asked about current AI uses, 54 percent of CAOs said their institution uses virtual AI assistants and chatbots. Up from 50 percent last year, this remains the top institutional use. About four in 10 provosts said their institution uses AI for research and data analysis, up from 31 percent last year, while 39 percent use AI for administrative processes such as scheduling—up from 24 percent. Among the least frequent uses are fundraising (11 percent), personalized learning (8 percent) and facilities management (4 percent).

Institutionwide AI impact is limited by skills and staff capacity, 51 percent of CAOs reported (as did 55 percent of chief technology officers in Inside Higher Ed’s May CTO survey). Exactly half of provosts named faculty and staff resistance as a limiting factor, and 39 percent cited concerns about how AI affects students. Nearly three in 10 provosts pointed to cost as an issue.

Students’ use of AI—for better and for worse—has dominated higher ed headlines over the past year, as institutions rethink how to assess students’ comprehension and mastery when AI agents can complete many traditional college assignments and AI-assisted cheating incidents abound. Only 8 percent of CAOs reported that their institution’s approach to AI at this point is “primarily defensive,” defined as focused on preventing and detecting cheating. About 13 percent said their institution is primarily focused on adapting current assignments and tests in response to AI, and 20 percent described their institution’s approach as “primarily generative,” meaning that it is actively rethinking what it assesses and how.

Over all, provosts’ attitudes toward the technology remain mixed. Nearly half of provosts—48 percent—rate AI’s impact on higher ed as neither positive nor negative. About 28 percent say its impact has been positive, and 17 percent say it’s been negative.

More Federal Influence, Less Funding

Like last year, Inside Higher Ed asked provosts about how the changing federal policy landscape under the second Trump administration has impacted their institution and their work. Funding remains a major concern: Half of all provosts reported that federal funding to their college or university has declined under Trump 2.0. Three in five CAOs at public institutions and four in five CAOs at public doctoral universities, in particular, said this. Just 3 percent of all provosts reported any kind of funding increase.

Some 42 percent of provosts reporting cuts (n=183) said federal funding has declined between 5 and 10 percent under Trump 2.0. Almost a quarter of impacted provosts reported funding declines over 10 percent—up from 12 percent the year prior.

In response to such changes, nearly half of all CAOs said their institution has pursued alternative funding sources. Another 29 percent said it has restructured or scaled back programs that relied on specific grants, and a quarter reduced staff positions. About one in 10 provosts reported postponed facilities projects and 7 percent said their institution partnered with others to share resources. Earlier this spring, reports of canceled or delayed graduate admissions at some colleges and universities prompted concerns of a draining Ph.D. pool, but in this most recent survey, only 4 percent of CAOs said their institution had paused or reduced graduate student admissions in response to federal funding changes.

To make up for declining research funding, specifically, some provosts said their institution is diversifying funding sources (31 percent), developing more industry partnerships (24 percent) and expanding grant-writing support (17 percent). Only 4 percent reported that their institution is reducing research expectations.

Amid all of the funding uncertainty, a quarter of all provosts said they are “somewhat” or “very confident” that the U.S. research enterprise will remain strong over the next decade. Though provosts at public doctoral institutions more frequently reported funding declines of more than 10 percent, they were more optimistic—43 percent said the research enterprise would likely remain strong.

Terry Brown, vice president of academic innovation and transformation at the American Association of State Colleges and Universities, and a former university provost, attributed this confidence to a higher starting point. “Doctoral institutions have a stronger base of research support to begin with, so they may be in a position to be more resilient,” she said.

About four in 10 provosts also said that federal policymakers have increased their influence on academic decision-making over the last two years. That figure rose to 46 percent among public university provosts, versus 35 percent of their private university peers.

“We are seeing an effort by the federal government to exert influence over academic decision-making, such as curriculum, research projects and faculty personnel decisions, through two major levers it holds: federal funding and accreditation,” Brown said. “Apart from the fact that most Americans do not want the federal government to control these areas of higher education, such intrusions can vary from one administration to the next, depending on who is in power.”

As the Trump administration overhauls accreditation nationwide, only 17 percent of provosts said the reforms would have a somewhat or strongly positive impact on higher ed. Provosts at community colleges and Southern institutions were more likely to say this, with 29 percent and 35 percent saying the reforms would be positive, respectively. Only 11 percent of provosts at private nonprofit baccalaureate institutions and 6 percent at Northeastern institutions said the same.

About a quarter of provosts reported their institution has modified language in course descriptions or program materials in response to recent federal policy changes or actions. Another quarter said it has reviewed and modified international student programming—up from the 16 percent who said so a year prior. About a fifth of provosts reported changing department names or descriptions, and 11 percent made revisions to curricular content in “politically sensitive areas.”

Brown said she’s seen AASCU member institutions taking all of these actions and more. “Our members have been grappling with understanding exactly what is required of them by law,” she said.

Lukewarm on Tenure

Nearly half of provosts—48 percent—said academic freedom at their institution is “strong and well protected, despite external pressure,” up from 36 percent last year. Another 44 percent reported that academic freedom is “generally maintained but with increasing challenges.” Only 5 percent said it’s “under significant strain from multiple directions.”

These numbers vary by region. Two-thirds of CAOs at Northeastern institutions said academic freedom is well protected, while one-third of CAOs at Southern institutions said the same. Meanwhile, 57 percent of Southern institution CAOs said academic freedom is generally maintained but with increasing challenges. Southern institutions include colleges and universities in Alabama, Florida and Texas, where public institutions have increasingly battled state interference in academic affairs.

Tim Cain, an academic freedom expert and professor of higher education at the University of Georgia, hesitated to put too much confidence in provosts’ assessments of academic freedom.

“I am not convinced that most provosts have a pulse on their faculty and understand how both the broader climate and specific actions are affecting and limiting the work of faculty,” Cain said. “Especially at larger institutions, but at most institutions, provosts are somewhat distant from the day-to-day work of faculty … There is also a larger tendency to deflect and believe that things are OK here but are a problem elsewhere.”

As tenure continues to receive increased scrutiny from politicians, administrators and the general public, fewer than half of provosts—45 percent—said tenure is “very” or “extremely important” to the health of their institution. Last year, 53 percent said this. Responses to this question vary widely by institution type in 2026: Provosts at public doctoral institutions largely agreed with tenure’s importance (72 percent), while provosts at associate and private nonprofit doctoral and master’s institutions did not (28 percent and 29 percent, respectively). In place of tenure, 53 percent of all provosts said they favor long-term faculty contracts.

“Tenure has been and remains the most robust protection for academic freedom, even if it does not protect everything that some faculty believe,” Cain said. He is skeptical about how well long-term faculty contracts would protect academic freedom: The strength of the contract would depend greatly on its terms and length, he said.

“Long-term contracts might just delay a dismissal,” he explained, “as they might not require an affirmative act of dismissal but allow a faculty member deemed problematic—including because a student, politician or donor complained about their research or teaching—to be administratively nonrenewed.”

Provosts are also paying attention to faculty attrition. Thirty percent of provosts in the South and 27 percent in the Midwest report higher-than-usual faculty turnover, compared with 17 percent in the Northeast and 19 percent in the West. Still, the overall share of provosts reporting increased faculty turnover has chilled since the Great Resignation.

This year, provosts cited competitive offers elsewhere (64 percent) and natural career progression (45 percent), followed by significant family or life events (34 percent), burnout (33 percent) and insufficient resources for the job (27 percent), as the most frequent causes of faculty turnover. Just 12 percent attributed turnover to the political climate in their state or region—though that figure increased to 18 percent of provosts in the Midwest and 15 percent of those in the South, versus 1 percent of provosts in the Northeast and 7 percent in the West.