Who Won the U.S. Presidential Debate?

Higher education is facing a tough challenge as it adapts to the advent of artificial intelligence. To combat it, a University of Mississippi professor proposes using one of academia's oldest weapons: debate.

Learning to debate is not only learning to argue but also learning to understand a subject so completely that one might defend or oppose any aspect of it, said Jacob Justice, assistant professor of speech communication, in a study published in Argumentation and Advocacy.

"The impact of AI on higher education broadly—everybody's still trying to figure that out to an extent," said Justice, who also coaches the Warren Debate Union, the Ole Miss debate team. "For the past two years, we've been grappling with this technology.

"Even though AI has offered a shortcut through the writing process, it actually still is important to be able to write and speak and think on your own. That's what the focus of this research is: how debate engenders those aspects of being able to write and speak and study and research on your own."

Justice and co-author Brett Bricker, associate director of debate at the University of Kansas, published their work in a special edition of Argumentation and Advocacy dedicated to collegiate policy debate. The researchers argue that learning to debate builds comprehension, research skills and empathy.

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