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Leadership1 distinct publisher3 min readPublished
Two mandatory psychology units lost their in-person classes this semester and kept their fee, which makes Macquarie an early read on whether students will pay the same money for teaching a machine now handles.
The Board Room · Leadership desk
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What the $2,174 buys is worth spelling out, because the university's own description narrows it considerably. Neither the online readings, quizzes and videos that Macquarie calls core learning nor the Virtual Peer activities are mandatory, and students are assessed only on separate research tasks and exams [4]. Strip the optional layers away and the fee attaches to assessment and a credential, with human contact supplied by tutors running Zoom sessions that a student may or may not attend [14]. That is a defensible product, and it is also a different product from the one the same money bought in first semester, when both subjects ran in-person classes [5].
The scale is what a student is actually comparing. The two units hold 1,100 people between them, 400 in the introductory subject and 700 in the final-year one [14][1]. At $2,174 a unit [7], that is roughly $2.39m in fees for one semester of two subjects [3], set against 16 optional Zoom sessions a week [2], or about one session for every 69 enrolled students [4]. Macquarie says attendance was variable and rose around assessment due dates [15], which is what happens when the sessions are the only route to a human and the human is the scarce input.
Calling this a clean test of price tolerance overstates what the record supports. The $2,174 figure is what an Australian student in a commonwealth supported place pays in 2026 [7], and nothing in the reporting establishes who adjusts that figure or whether it can vary with mode of delivery. If the price is not Macquarie's to move, then holding it flat is not a pricing decision; the decision the university did make was which mode to offer this semester, and the fee stayed where it already was.
A skeptic inside the faculty would say nothing was withdrawn. The AI work supplements core learning [3], the tool was built with educators to support rather than replace them [11], academics upload and check the material it draws on, which experts say may leave it less prone to inventing content [12], and surveyed staff and students overwhelmingly rated it valuable [17]. The weaker link is the enrolment path rather than the pedagogy: one student, speaking anonymously, said problems with their degree structure forced them into the online option and left them feeling short-changed [9]. When timetabling decides the mode, the optionality sits with the institution rather than the student.
The usage figures point to a narrower capability than teaching. Virtual Peer answered close to 80,000 questions across all of 2025 and nearly as many in the first half of 2026 [16], an annualised pace roughly double the prior year [5], and most of those questions were administrative [16]. That is queue absorption at a service desk, and it is measurable. Whether scenario exercises with a bot teach final-year psychology as well as a tutor-led discussion is not established by any number in the record, and Macquarie can read the conversation logs [13] while the students it monitors have no equivalent view.
The 2027 arrangement is where this gets legible. Macquarie says in-person classes return in alternate semesters so students can pick the format that suits their circumstances [6]. Run two modes at one price and the enrolment split becomes a preference signal that no survey can supply. Sydney's late-August discussion paper already sketches futures in which AI delivers personalised teaching in every unit while staff-student contact hours decline [20], and Sydney has shared its Cogniti platform with institutions in Australia, New Zealand and the Netherlands [21]. What Macquarie decides to charge for the taught semester is the number that will travel.
Ranked by verification strength, evidence, and original report placement.
Macquarie University swapped in-person classes for an AI chatbot, online quizzes and optional online tutorials in two subjects.
Macquarie's "Virtual Peer" is part of each week's learning in two mandatory Psychology units, programmed to ask students questions and guide them through scenario-based exercises.
Both subjects had in-person classes in the first semester of this year.
The university said in-person classes would return in 2027 in alternate semesters so students could pick the format that suits their circumstances.
Each individual psychology subject costs $2,174 for Australian students with commonwealth supported places in 2026.
Distinct publishers with included, body-backed reporting in this cluster.
1 article · September 1, 2026
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Evidence-backed comparisons of source perspectives and observed adoption signals. Read the methodology
Which Builder, Operator, and Investor concerns the observed source mix emphasized—not a truth score.
Evidence, demonstrated adoption, hype gap, incentives, and confidence are assessed independently, each on its own current evidence. How these are measured.
One masthead, mostly the university's own numbers
The spine of this story is verifiable in kind but not in source: fees, enrolments, session counts and the 80,000-question figure all come from Macquarie via the Guardian, with no document, dashboard or second institution confirming them. What lifts it above thin is that the load of interpretation is carried by people who can be named and challenged — Jha at CQU, the NTEU's Chen and Barnes, Sydney's published paper — and that the reporting flags its own weak spots, including that most chatbot questions were administrative.
Live in graded units, not a pilot
This is past the demo stage. Eleven hundred students in compulsory units met the tool instead of a classroom this semester, its question volume is running at roughly double last year's pace, and the same behaviour shows up at two other universities — Sydney's Cogniti in hundreds of academics' hands and shared across three countries, CQU's Birdy in 24 units. What holds the score short of high is scope: two units at one institution, a promised return to in-person teaching in 2027, and a usage log dominated by administrative queries rather than teaching.
Institutional language softer than the facts underneath
The overstatement here is the university's, not the reporting's. 'Optional', 'supplement', 'support not replace' and an unpublished survey describing overwhelming enthusiasm all point away from what the same account establishes: scheduled human teaching in two compulsory units is gone, nothing else is mandatory either, and the busiest thing the chatbot does is answer admin questions. The Guardian's own framing stays close to the evidence, and Sydney volunteering that AI 'isn't a cost-saving measure in any way' is the tell that everyone involved knows how this reads.
Everyone speaking has a stake, and it shows
Read the sourcing as a set of interests and the story clarifies. Macquarie is defending both a delivery decision and a price, and controls every figure quoted about its own tool. The student who felt short-changed spoke only anonymously, which is itself a fact about power in the relationship. The NTEU is mid-bargaining with a strike scheduled and has said it will not settle without AI clauses, so its warnings arrive with leverage attached. Jha is the closest thing to a disinterested voice, and she runs a chatbot in her own likeness. Sydney's spokesperson pre-emptively denies cost-cutting in a sector the report describes as funding-short.
Confident about what changed, less so about what it produced
That two compulsory psychology units lost their classes while keeping their price is about as solid as single-masthead reporting gets — the university confirmed it and named its 2027 walk-back. What cannot be settled from this record is whether students learned less, what the switch saved, or how accurate the tool is, because no outcome data, cost figure or error rate exists anywhere in the reporting. Confidence sits in the middle because the facts and the unknowns are cleanly separated rather than blurred.