Reframing Civic and Ethical Education in Higher Education in the Age of AI: Challenges and Strategic Responses

The rapid diffusion of artificial intelligence across higher education has transformed how students access information, communicate with peers, complete academic tasks, and form judgments about public life. These developments create opportunities for more responsive, inclusive, and data-informed learning, but they also intensify concerns about algorithmic filtering, synthetic misinformation, human–AI dependency, and the weakening of reflective agency. Building on these tensions, this article reframes a traditionally politicised discussion of student development as a broader question of civic and ethical education in international higher education. Rather than treating values education as one-way transmission, the article argues that universities should cultivate critical AI literacy, moral discernment, dialogic competence, and responsible participation in digitally mediated communities. The discussion proceeds in three steps. First, it identifies the distinctive features of AI-shaped educational environments, including multimodal content delivery, hybrid learning spaces, and increasingly interactive symbolic systems. Second, it examines four major risks for university students: algorithmic echo chambers, moral displacement in human–AI interaction, the spread of harmful or deceptive AI-generated content, and growing dependence on automated tools. Third, it proposes a reconstruction of educational pathways grounded in human-centred pedagogy, interactive civic learning, critical media and AI literacy, and institution-wide governance. The article concludes that the most effective educational response to AI is neither technological enthusiasm nor defensive prohibition, but a balanced framework in which technical innovation remains subordinate to human flourishing, academic integrity, intercultural understanding, and the development of independent judgment.