The transformation of epistemic agency and governance in higher education through Large Language Models – toward a future of organized immaturity

Why and how does the use of large language models (LLMs) transform epistemic agency and epistemic governance in Higher Education (HE), and why can this transformation usher organized immaturity as a new organizing principle for HE? Asking these questions now matters because (i) the profound impact of LLMs on epistemic agency and governance in HE has not been adequately scrutinized by theorists of organizations and HE to date and (ii) LLMs represent an epistemic technology that fundamentally alters who produces knowledge, how knowledge is produced (through research), disseminated (through education), and what kind of knowledge is produced. This lack of scrutiny leaves us unequipped to understand why and how LLMs transform (via the activities of Big EdTech first, and institutional responses second) epistemic agency and epistemic governance in HE. Two aims follow from this broader concern. First, we interrogate how ‘epistemic agency’ undergoes transformation as more HE institutions (and related parties) adopt and legitimatize LLMs in research and education in ways that rewrites the rules concerning epistemic governance in favor of Big EdTech. In this process, epistemic agents transform into epistemic consumers over time. Building on this, our second aim is to show why the aforementioned transformation can usher organized immaturity as a new organizing principle for HE. This development undermines the Humboldtian ideal of HE as a progressive cultural project of integrating research and education within a broader normative foundation of academic freedom. This ideal also emphasizes the intellectual development of reason and ‘holistic knowledge’ to enable social deliberation essential to the development and maintenance of democracies. We discuss the theoretical ramifications of our analysis, suggest avenues for future research, and offer an agenda for immediate corrective action to enlarge our control over epistemic agency and governance in HE.