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AI/ML is going to lower the value of degrees and also lowering the half-life of the value of any skill set by driving obsolescence at a rate once considered unimaginable. This is going cause a dramatic shift and organizations and individuals are going to learn the main skill set of value is to be able to adapt at an ever-increasing rate and to use automation for both physical and mental tasks. The ability to rapidly adapt at an ever-increasing rate will be the main and the ability to use technologies of all types will determine success. I see education/training going to a subscription basis to keep up. To take out student loans that take decades to pay off for a skill set that doesn't adapt will come to a sad end for those that pursue it. The world is changing and we must adapt.
At least in the USA - what’s going on is that we’ve devalued trade jobs way too much. There’s a big shortage of carpenters, electricians, etc, and it’s only getting worse as the oldest ones are retiring at a rate faster than they’re being replaced. Colleges have become marketing machines, and you can see that in how much college tuition has outpaced inflation over the last 30-40 years.
AI will (IMO) simply shift which degrees / trade skills are relevant. But it’s not going to make degrees as a wholesale obsolete, at least not in the short run (20 years). The real threat to AI vs. degrees IMO is that with an AI teacher you’ll finally be able to customize *how* the information is taught*. Once people largely figure out how valuable that is, then we’ll see some serious chaos in education.
(*i.e. tailored to individual learning preferences — memorization vs. learning the “why”, emphasizing math vs language, tailoring towards mental abilities, I.e. neuro-divergent vs neuro-typical, or whatever makes the most sense for the individual).
When I chose my field of study I had specific computer related jobs in mind. I even majored in Computer Science and Electrical Engineering to increase my odds. Back then EE jobs were 10 to 1 of CS jobs so I never wrote a line of code professionally. The slackers in my college years (a lot of my friends) majored in communications, psychology, and Physed. Most of them did fine but today is a different story with AI.
AI is definitely going to thin the job market but to me it will be like when spreadsheets (Lotus 1-2-3) came out people thought the same, jobs would be lost... Where would we be today without XLS? AI will be that, the XLS of our generation, my opinion.
Universities will not allow anything to change here, and with most of the useless degrees going into the gov't bureaucratic class, they have friends in the right places. Degrees are terrible on an economic basis, but they still exist as "social" validation that one is "on the right team".
Universities will not allow anything to change here, and with most of the useless degrees going into the gov't bureaucratic class, they have friends in the right places. Degrees are terrible on an economic basis, but they still exist as "social" validation that one is "on the right team".
When I went to college my motivation was money. I wanted to strike it big in Silicon Valley. When my children went to college I told them to take something they will enjoy doing for the rest of their life and they did. Today I would go back to the money thing because worrying about money the rest of your life will not be enjoyable.
I am testing Copilot and it is pretty good tool but is is still just a tool and requires high level of understanding. So degrees will be still necessary. Maybe even extended to accommodate "prompt engineering".
AI/ML is going to lower the value of degrees and also lowering the half-life of the value of any skill set by driving obsolescence at a rate once considered unimaginable. This is going cause a dramatic shift and organizations and individuals are going to learn the main skill set of value is to be able to adapt at an ever-increasing rate and to use automation for both physical and mental tasks. The ability to rapidly adapt at an ever-increasing rate will be the main and the ability to use technologies of all types will determine success. I see education/training going to a subscription basis to keep up. To take out student loans that take decades to pay off for a skill set that doesn't adapt will come to a sad end for those that pursue it. The world is changing and we must adapt.
While I agree with the basic premise and that ongoing "subscription" education already matters more than degrees and that this is now technically possible, there are a few practical reasons why I don't see university education becoming obsolete.
Firstly, those of us claiming that we're readily able to manage with the ongoing learning are almost entirely those who already have the technical university degrees. We've had the underlying ability to work things through from first principles and then check things actually work in the lab drilled into us (or at least I hope we have and still do). That makes future learning and adaptation so much easier. What we really need to know is how easy that would be for those without these degrees. So we are the last people to ask for an opinion here !
Secondly, many employers use the possession of a "good degree" as a proxy, rather than something of direct value. Having the ability to get into a good university and make the financial and time commitment to get a degree there is seen as a reliable indicator of employability. And that seems to correlate well in practice. It's a very expensive proxy measure, but there's nothing better yet.
Thirdly, a large part of the value of going to an elite university is the networking opportunities this offers. On-line can never replicate this.
All that said - and call me old-fashioned - I think way too many young people (at least 2x) in Western countries are going to university (by which I mean what a university as 40 years ago) now. And that at least 2x are studying subjects with no ultimate value to society. There are certainly cheaper and faster ways for this sort of studying to be done.
