AI Is Changing What a Professor's Time Is Worth

As AI takes over the routine work of preparing exams and materials, universities face a quieter question: what should educators do with the time it hands back?

by Yoana Stanislavova

September 8, 2026 ∙ 3 min read

For a long time, a lecturer's hours went into producing things — questions, tests, materials, summaries. It's the kind of output AI can now generate in seconds. Which raises a more interesting question than most of the AI debate bothers with: if routine output is handled, what is a professor's time best spent on?

The work behind the teaching

For Elena Radeva, a lecturer at the American University in Bulgaria who has also taught at the University of Sheffield International Faculty, that change is already part of how she works:

"AI has become a valuable assistant to me. It helps me prepare drafts of teaching materials, generate examples and discussion questions, organize ideas, and explore different ways of explaining a concept."

This is also happening at the institutional level. One example comes from Bulgarian technology company MY Synergy. Together with the Faculty of Pharmacy at the Medical University of Pleven, they have developed and implemented a specialised AI solution that assists lecturers in creating exam questions, tests, case studies and other materials for assessing students.