[INTERVIEW] Grades matter less than motivation in AI era, HKU vice-president says

HONG KONG — When asked how artificial intelligence (AI) is changing higher education, Jay S. Siegel, vice president of the University of Hong Kong (HKU), began by challenging the premise of the question.

“I don’t think that higher education is moving beyond content delivery and into critical thinking,” he said during an interview with The Korea Times on the university’s campus.

Siegel, who also serves as pro-vice-chancellor for teaching and learning, argued that leading universities have always sought to develop independent thinkers. What concerns him more is whether universities place too much emphasis on grades and examinations rather than encouraging students to develop a lasting desire to learn.

“Motivation is more important than assessment,” he said.

Siegel believes examinations are valuable primarily because they encourage students to study, rather than because of the grades they produce. Preparing for a test requires students to read, think and engage with material, and that effort may matter more than the eventual score.

A student who studies diligently but receives 70 percent instead of 85 percent may still have gained considerably from the experience, he explained.

“Again, it’s a behavioral modification, not an outcome,” he said.

He pointed out that some highly creative people performed poorly in school, even though they may have studied hard and discovered new interests while preparing for exams.

Conversely, students who excel at memorizing and reproducing information may not develop the intellectual habits needed to become creative thinkers.

Siegel also questioned the assumption that a student with a 4.0 grade point average is necessarily better equipped for intellectual growth than one with a 3.0.

Placing excessive value on grades, he argued, can encourage students to seek external approval rather than question their own knowledge and judgment.

“In some ways, the 3.0 student is better off because she questions her own knowledge,” he said.

Such students may be more willing to examine their shortcomings and ask what they need to do differently, he explained.

Siegel stressed that his personal philosophy should not be taken as HKU’s official position on assessment. He does not advocate eliminating examinations or relaxing standards for factual accuracy. Instead, he believes universities should focus more on what drives students to learn than on the grades they receive.

AI as tool for deeper learning

At HKU, Siegel said, AI has a role to play in administration, teaching and research.

AI could simplify admissions procedures, freeing staff to focus on other work. Researchers, meanwhile, could use AI to spot patterns in large amounts of data that might otherwise go unnoticed.

In teaching, he believes AI could help students prepare for more productive discussions with their professors.

He described a learning environment in which students could use AI to access lectures and reading materials and ask questions whenever they encounter difficulties.

HKU is working to support this through its AI Hub, which offers AI-based applications such as Ark Junior.

Such tools could encourage students to make reading, questioning and independent thinking part of their daily routine. By the time they meet their professors, they would be ready for more substantial discussions, rather than simply receiving information.

“Then when you get to finally sit with the professor, now you get great value,” he said.

For Siegel, the aim is not to replace educators or other university employees with technology, but to give them more time for work that requires human judgment and creativity.

“We’re not interested in replacing people as much as we are in making sure that these very talented people that we’ve hired have more time,” he said.

‘Knowledge is not the same as wisdom’

Having spent five decades in higher education, Siegel said universities were already emphasizing inquiry and critical thinking in the 1970s. Students were expected to acquire much of their factual knowledge independently, while professors helped them develop intellectual maturity and the analytical skills needed to ask meaningful questions.

What matters most, he argued, is whether an education changes the way students behave long after they have completed their courses.

“Teaching is not done through certificates and degrees. Teaching is done by changing behavior,” he said.

He offered the example of a writing course. Even if students earn excellent grades and understand the principles of effective writing, the course has accomplished little if they never develop the habit of writing afterwards.

He described universities as communities of scholars in which students develop relationships that sustain learning throughout their lives. Even years after graduation, students can keep learning from the people they met at university, he said.

AI may make knowledge easier to obtain, but Siegel noted that libraries have long contained far more information than any individual could absorb. Access to knowledge alone has never been sufficient to explain the value of university education.

“Knowledge is not the same as wisdom,” he said. “Wisdom manifests in the creative character of what questions one asks and in the maturity of the decisions we make. Wisdom comprises personal knowledge and social experience without being limited or fully defined by them.”

As HKU seeks to strengthen connections between academic and campus life, Siegel said he wants graduates to carry with them a distinctive way of thinking, rather than merely a collection of qualifications.

His ambition is that even a decade after graduation, a brief conversation with an HKU alumnus would reveal how the university had shaped that person’s outlook, intellectual habits and approach to life.