There is a certain kind of ambition that doesn’t make itself known. It doesn’t come with a big product launch or a $700 million price tag. It shows up in a Kansas high school class where a teen is writing AI code on a device that costs less than a pair of sneakers. When you think about what’s going on in Kansas City’s schools right now, that picture is worth keeping in mind.
Professor Tamzidul Hoque of electrical engineering and computer science at the University of Kansas runs a program that most people outside of academia don’t know about, but they really should. Hoque’s project is building educational modules about edge AI with help from a $1.4 million National Science Foundation grant, of which about $350,000 goes to KU. The goal is clear, if not easy: get students to write and run AI code on TinyML devices, which are small enough to fit in a pocket and cheap enough for schools that can’t afford much else. The things don’t cost more than $45. It’s not a mistake.
That price point makes it hard not to notice what was thought behind it. A lot of AI education programs say they are open to everyone, but they secretly assume that every school has a computer lab and enough money. The way Hoque does things is the opposite of what most people do: they design for constraints first and then build up. It already works with Shawnee Mission West High School and wants to reach 500 students and 25 teachers in Kansas, Florida, and Texas. It’s still not clear if that will scale the way the grant wants it to, but the way it’s being talked about now is thoughtful.
The focus on community-based projects is what really makes the curriculum feel different. The students aren’t just learning how to code in a general way. They are working on things like tools to help farmers and systems that can find fires. That was a choice, and it does matter. A problem that has been around for a long time in STEM education is that students learn technical skills without being around other people who might use those skills. The way Hoque is building around that trap shows that he is aware of it.
UMKC across town has been doing a similar job, but it looks at it through the lens of the whole institution. In the fall of 2023, ZhiQiang Chen, a professor of civil engineering, created what seems to have been the first AI course in civil engineering at the university. A professor in the School of Law tells his or her students to play around with large language models. AI is being used by the nursing school to make case studies of patients. Different departments are working on it at different speeds, but it seems like the school is trying to figure out what AI means for each field instead of just adding the word to courses that are already being taught.
The other angle is more about work. The 260-hour data science and AI course at Kansas City Kansas Community College is self-paced and lasts for nine months. It is based on Python, machine learning, and SQL. It’s very useful, almost too much. When it’s over, you’ll know how to clean data, make models, and push a project to GitHub. That’s not nothing for someone who is changing careers or entering the job market without a four-year degree. It might be a pretty big amount.
In this case, there isn’t a single coordinated strategy that’s coming together. It’s more like a bunch of different schools, each with their own resources and students, came to the same conclusion around the same time: there is a real need for people who understand AI on a technical level, and it’s not going away. The CHIPS and Science Act gave the federal government some momentum. The rest came from the job market.
It’s worth keeping an eye on all of this, but not because Kansas City is changing the way we learn. Instead, it might be showing what real, basic AI training looks like when you get rid of the hype and focus on what schools can afford, what students need, and what communities can gain.
