Epistemic reconfiguration in higher education: Generative artificial intelligence, stratification and the renewal of pedagogical judgement

This conceptual article contends that generative artificial intelligence (generative AI) is driving an epistemic reconfiguration in higher education. It places AI within the processes of platformisation through which digital infrastructures reorganise how knowledge is produced, accessed and governed. These changes modify the conditions under which knowledge is recognised and learned, potentially weakening the educational relationship between writing, thinking and understanding when AI use bypasses the cognitive and metacognitive work through which understanding develops. The article develops a framework linking platformisation, AI-mediated meaning-making, and the reorganisation of pedagogy. It argues that these processes produce epistemic stratification by unevenly shaping students’ and institutions’ capacity to sustain epistemic ascent. Artificial intelligence is therefore not merely a technological or assessment challenge, but part of a broader epistemic reconfiguration that reshapes the conditions under which knowledge is produced, recognised and learned. Contribution: Situated in Global South contexts, the article examines how these dynamics intersect with historically entrenched inequalities and forms of epistemic dependency. In response, it advances epistemic ascent, understood as the structured development of conceptual understanding, disciplinary reasoning and judgement, as a central educational objective. The article argues that pedagogical judgement and design-based pedagogies are essential for organising AI use in ways that sustain conceptual engagement, epistemic justice and the university’s public-good mission. The article also illustrates two design-based pedagogical tasks through which lecturers can organise AI-supported learning around conceptual reasoning and disciplinary judgement.