From Tool to Teaching Partner: The Rise of Agentic AI in Education

This paper examines the emergence of agentic artificial intelligence in higher education, exploring the shift from AI as a tool to AI as an institutional actor. Using a structured narrative literature review, the study addresses four research questions: how agentic AI is defined, what autonomous behaviors current systems demonstrate, how increasing AI autonomy reshapes teaching roles and student engagement, and what governance frameworks can guide responsible integration. The analysis establishes that agentic AI is architecturally distinct from prior educational technologies in ways the field has not adequately theorized, and that existing governance structures are poorly equipped for the autonomy these systems now exercise. The paper introduces the Agentic AI Integration Continuum, a four-level framework providing institutions with a shared vocabulary for categorizing AI autonomy, calibrating risk, and aligning governance with actual deployment conditions. The paper concludes with a faculty roadmap prioritizing process-verified learning and explicitly scoped autonomy to preserve human agency in an increasingly automated academic environment.