AI Moves Into the LMS Before Higher Ed Has a Policy to Meet It

Higher education's AI adoption is not happening through faculty senates or academic computing committees — it is happening through grant structures and vendor contracts that arrive before deliberation is scheduled. The federal funding environment, described by one administrator as "manic" about generative AI ^[2], creates a pressure gradient that institutional governance is not built to resist. By the time a committee convenes to evaluate a tool, the tool is already in the LMS.