Aleix Barrera-Corominas, Micaela de-Armas-Bertossi and Abraham Bernárdez-Gómez (University of Vigo), presented a paper titled “Concerns of Higher Education Managers Regarding the use of Artificial Intelligence in University Education” at ECER 2026, the European Conference on Educational Research organized by the European Educational Research Association (EERA), held August 18–21, 2026, at Tampere University (Finland), under the theme “Knowing and Acting: The changing conditions and potentials of education research”.
The study, qualitative and exploratory in nature, was based on six focus groups conducted during the first half of 2025 at five Spanish universities with a generalist profile, involving 51 university managers holding positions such as vice-rectors, deans, vice-deans, and programme coordinators.
The findings show a high prevalence of concern among institutional leaders about how AI should be used in higher education, organized around three main areas: concern over ethical use, given the risk that AI may undermine students’ values education and academic integrity; concern over secure use, focused on how AI providers handle data and compliance with European regulations; and concern over confident use, which leads the research team to stress the need for specific training plans for both students and academic staff.
This paper is part of the EdU-InA project – Policies and Practices on Generative Artificial Intelligence in University Education (Ref. PID2023-149069OA-I00), funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities and the State Research Agency (AEI), and co-funded by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF).
