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For the last few months, I've been collecting journalism, opinion pieces, and essays about what will happen to higher education in the age of AI.
I'll post those over the next few weeks, and I'll look forward to your reactions. But I thought I'd start with this essay from the New Yorker, by Jay Kaspian Kang, which in a way is beginning at the end.
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If we agree that college primarily serves a credentialling process that stamps select young people as worthy of work, and, if we agree that A.I. helps to expose it as such, might we not conclude that, at some point, people will collectively stop paying into the system, or will start seeking out other, less expensive credentials?
I do not think that A.I. will singlehandedly destroy college. But I do think that it will accelerate an already growing disillusionment with higher education. In 2013, seventy-four per cent of eighteen-to-thirty-four-year-olds polled by Gallup said that a college education was “very important.” By 2019, three years before the public adoption of ChatGPT, that number had dropped to forty-three per cent; it fell again, in 2025, to thirty-five per cent, a decline that represented the steepest drop among all age groups that were surveyed. This drop might level off at some point, simply because most things regress to previous norms. But I cannot come up with any reason why the trend would reverse direction without radical changes to cost and access at the types of élite colleges that facilitate class mobility. What seems likely is a winner-takes-all scenario, in which the élite schools and flagship state universities survive on account of their cultural, financial, and reputational advantages, while other schools die out, leading to either a huge expansion in enrollment among the survivors (unlikely) or a steady drop in the number of young people who seek out a four-year degree. That may be a good outcome, but the gospel that I grew up with—the idea that everyone should get a college education not only for upward mobility but also to explore reading, thinking, and writing for their own sake—will be dead.
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I think Mr. Kang has put his finger on it. At least three quarters of our higher education institutions have survived by positioning themselves as credentialing institutions: That four-year degree will make you more employable. It will be your ticket to a good job, a higher salary, and a life better than the ones your parents led.
AI is beginning to wipe that particular reality away.
To be clear: Higher education is more than due for a reckoning. The Higher Education Act of 1965 opened the doors for students to borrow for their degree in a way that had never been possible before, and from there through the 2000s, colleges were able to consistently hike their tuition rates because students were borrowing to attend--and students believed that the loans would pay off, in the end, because of those good jobs and higher salaries. That is no longer the case, but at the same time, the entire apparatus of student loans has quadrupled and encouraged even more debt and even more borrowing.
Upward mobility won the day. Exploring reading, writing, and thinking for their own sake has increasingly become a privilege of those who can pay for it without borrowing.
This is not sustainable for higher education. We're looking at a sea change here, and the tide is just beginning to swell.
www.newyorker.com/news/fault-lines/will-ai-make-college-obsolete?_sp=5ad68571-16a8-4d3f-8782-4921...
www.merriam-webster.com/wordplay/sea-change-shakespeare-origin-history
www.bu.edu/fairstudentloans/a-brief-history-of-student-loans/ ... See MoreSee Less

Will A.I. Make College Obsolete?
www.newyorker.com
During a time when American trust in institutions is at an all- time low, A.I. is poised to accelerate a growing disillusionment with higher education.2 hours ago
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In case it's not already in your collection of sources, here's the Report of the Yale Committee on Trust in Higher Education. It went beyond the daily churn of committee work in describing the depth and breadth of the problem, and the recommendations apply to some extent to other institutions as well. president.yale.edu/sites/default/files/2026-04/Report-of-the-Committee-on-Trust-in-Higher-Educati...
I don't want college to become obsolete, but I'd love it if it stopped being the main goal we push people towards. We are in a trades crisis, and even college-bound people could work in a trade for a few years before going to college, and be more financially stable and less in need of loans.
I’d add the advent of social media. It’s not just AI. There are many kids making a fairly decent amount of money in YouTube, TicToc and other platforms. Kids that with a college degree would be slaving 12 hour a day jobs for just above minimum salary. Opinion polls in LATAM speak loudly when show that most kids aspire to be an influencer. Just saying.
I was just discussing this with friends this morning, a group of friends who are all giving our children a liberal arts homeschool education. It is hard to justify the cost indeed, without knowing if the return on investment will be financially beneficial.  i’m a veterinarian, which required eight years of college education, and I will be paying that debt off until I am 56. I love it and it was worth it to me, but I’m not going to encourage my children to incur that sort of debt unless they know they have a very good prospect for paying it off. Luckily, our state university offers a full tuition scholarship for a good GPA, and we were able to save for them in 529 plans from the time they were babies, so they will be able to go to state schools if they want to. My oldest is graduating today (!) and planning to start at a university to work toward becoming an engineer, but he is honestly wrestling with the thought of being an electrician instead. He likes to be active, and also the trades are probably going to be more resistant to AI undermining. None of my kids love the humanities like I do, but at least I have the comfort that I’m giving them a very good liberal arts education before they leave home. And hopefully some of it sticks and they want to continue to learn and read in different areas throughout adulthood. But… I don’t really expect a state college to give them a good liberal arts education. I do think there’s benefit and being exposed to different viewpoints and people of different backgrounds, more perhaps than they would if they did not go to college. But… is it worth the price?
For our final episode of Season 5 of the Well-Trained Mind Podcast, co-host Susanna Jarrett and I did a VIDEO EPISODE! So you can listen to our Q&A episode on your regular podcast feeds--or you can watch us on YouTube!
www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZOenQN4DYGg&list=PLfMWKhLOATe2dseJYbjBJyYWrcETBGsGy
welltrainedmind.com/the-well-trained-mind-podcast/ ... See MoreSee Less
7 days ago
