Maestro College, the for-profit school that carried out instruction almost exclusively with an AI chatbot, is set to lose accreditation in mid-October, cutting it off from accessing federal financial aid.
The decision by its accreditor follows New America’s six-month investigation into Maestro, published in July, which revealed that an AI system taught students their lessons and administered their final exams, skirting real faculty completely. Most students told me they had never been in contact with any Maestro employee, creating barriers to basic services colleges offer, like disability accommodations. Maestro, in how it set up this model, appears to be violating not only its accreditor’s rules, but also federal laws and regulations, including those that mandate faculty interactions with students in distance education programs.
The school also markets itself as free, but in reality is draining students’ federal financial aid, which is limited, to pay for a chatbot-delivered degree.
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But this saga should serve as a cautionary tale not just for higher education’s regulators, but also the sector at large.
Colleges must acknowledge that students find AI in the classroom appealing. Several Maestro students told me they had felt mismatched with more traditional colleges, but that turning to the AI “tutor” allowed them to understand the lessons at their own pace, and in their own way. They didn’t feel “dumb,” as they had in a brick-and-mortar classroom. This type of instruction, coupled with the promise of free tuition, proved to be an alluring pitch, and sent Maestro’s student numbers skyrocketing. Under its previous name, Peloton College, fall enrollment in the past few years often wouldn’t reach 100 students, but as Maestro, it was taking in thousands.
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