Ethical integration of generative artificial intelligence in higher education: safeguarding cognitive development and advancing innovation

Generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) is rapidly transforming higher education by expanding opportunities for learning, teaching, and innovation. While institutions have focused heavily on academic integrity, compliance, and technological adoption, less attention has been given to the deeper educational tension GenAI introduces: it can improve feedback, accessibility, efficiency, and instructional support for both students and faculty, yet it can also weaken the cognitive effort, originality, and judgment that higher education is meant to cultivate. We argue that the central issue is not whether GenAI should be used, but how it should be integrated so that it augments rather than replaces human learning. Drawing on learning sciences research, emerging evidence, and our experience as educators, we make a distinctive case for a human-centered approach that treats ethics as pedagogy, emphasizes faculty leadership and shared governance, and calls for redesigning teaching and assessment to keep student thinking visible, meaningful, and developmentally productive.