Future-proofing graduates

Contemplating what higher education must do to prepare graduates for the workforces and communities of the future can take us down many pathways. The question is, how can consensus be built that will draw faculty and staff together in a concerted effort to actually do something that will be effective. Predictions are that AI literacy is a core skill that will be central to future college graduates' success. President Trump appointed a "Superintelligence Force" in September 2024 to provide guidance on the pace and nature of emergent AI. The appointees are technology sector leaders with one person representing higher education's interests - former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice from the Hoover Institution at Stanford.

Using AI to generate ideas about where higher education should focus resulted in four areas:

• Metacognitive agility - The ability to "learn how to learn" and the humility to remain a "rookie" as tools evolve every few months.
• Ethical discernment - AI can provide options, but it lacks a moral compass. The ability to weigh the societal and human consequences of a decision is a premium trait.
• Empathic leadership - Managing teams in an era of uncertainty requires high emotional intelligence (EQ) to maintain morale and navigate complex human conflicts.
• Systems thinking - The capacity to connect dots across disparate disciplines (e.g., law, tech and sociology) to solve "wicked" problems that AI sees only in fragments.

These are verbatim from Gemini 3 Thinking - because I couldn't find ways to improve them. The question is if higher education has the ability to shift to such encompassing and critical areas when many in the academy are metaphorically focused on how many angels can dance on the tip of a pin. Higher education's work goes beyond knowledge production to negotiating with others about how that knowledge is to be used. Restoring trust in higher education is an important priority and visions of the future; the AAUP statement provides a pathway which faculty may be willing to support.

Beyond discussions and statements about what today's students need to learn in order to thrive in the present and future, it's important to look at the choices students make about how they will engage and with whom. It may have been written in 2009 but Alexander Astin's Four Critical Years was way ahead of the thinking of most educators; his research indicated that the most important factor in student learning was peer influence. Assuming that this is still true in an age of technology and growing isolation, addressing students' choices in the use of their time is essential. Unfortunately, Professor Neil Gross' insights about how contemporary students are hunkering down in their own silos has to be addressed. Gross argues that polarization is dividing students and, although they are creating the dynamic, "colleges aren't doing enough to counteract their ideological self-isolation."

It's fascinating that Pope Leo XIV is the most prominent international leader to make a definitive statement about how to respond to the emergence of AI. His "Magnifica Humanitas" advocates "Without careful attention, an educational system lacking in a love for truth may emerge, in which an incessant flow of information replaces the essential exercise of research, reflection and discernment. As knowledge becomes increasingly fragmented, it becomes difficult to grasp reality as a whole, to ask profound questions about meaning, or to develop authentic, critical and creative thought."

Recent evidence indicates that current college graduates face an AI-induced employment recession for entry level workers. However, even through the job market for recent graduates is not good, it's not as bad as the "Great Recession" of 2007-08. Regardless of the challenges, "... most recent labor market data shows that a college degree remains 'an investment that pays off over the full career, not just those first couple of years [after college].'" The advanced intellectual skills acquired in college "are going to be critical to an environment where technological change is advancing at the pace that AI seems to be."

While current students and recent graduates fret over job prospects, they should take heart by looking further into the future and predictions that there will be a growing labor shortage resulting in as high as a 6 million person gap by 2032. Young men are noticeably more skeptical about the benefit of pursuing a college degree which is a huge risk for them and employers of the future. Ten community colleges joined the "Unlocking Opportunity Project" designed to steer students toward high-value programs by 27% which also resulted in a 25% decrease in low-value program enrollment.

Displacement of current workers sends a clear message to students, policy makers and other stakeholders. As a result, current students are already rethinking their majors in the light of AI's emergence. Contributing to the problem of securing jobs upon graduation, many students are choosing majors that don't match employment needs. Four out of ten students are anxious about how AI will impact their job prospects. As entry-level jobs lag, 43% of students are considering graduate school, 58% are looking to entrepreneurship opportunities. Some graduates are accepting jobs they intend to leave as soon as possible.

Graduates' concerns about having AI skills for future workplaces is exacerbated by no clear indication of what that involves. Some institutions are turning to partnerships with local businesses to discern and offer programs that address future AI skills. Institutions like the University of Virginia and State University of New York are focusing on AI literacy and action to respond to students' anxiety and other institutions were embedding AI competencies into courses and majors by Fall of 2026. A faculty & staff committee at MIT advised that AI was fundamentally changing the learning experience, complicating the measurement of student achievement and resulting in greater social isolation. Changes in AI must be nimbly incorporated into coursework, which requires faculty to stay abreast of AI.

To demonstrate how important the AI question is, the New York Times reported that Anthropic planned to postpone release of its newest model (Mythos) because the prototype was too good at finding software weaknesses. Even as the AI-influenced employment landscape unfolds, graduates are relatively optimistic about their futures, seeing value in their degrees and 79% believing that it is "not too likely" or "not at all likely" to result in loss of their jobs.

Otto Scharmer, futurist and visionary, predicts that "We may be entering a new axial age." He says that the first axial age occurred when humans moved from hunter-gatherers to communities of increasing complexity and advancing technologies. Today's "polycrisis of climate chaos, mass migration, increasing warfare and transformative AI represents a rupture of comparable magnitude. The crisis of depleted social soil of the planet will require the recreation of educational and media ecosystems, democratic structures, and economic systems. Changes this fundamental will not take place quickly but will emerge gradually in the cracks of existing institutions. In this scenario, the future-proofed graduate will live in a world where disruption is normalized and welcomed as the process of recreation unfolds. Underpinning the transformation of learning lies a natural quality that can help during a period of rapid change - students thrive when they have "faculty contact, peer relationships across difference and a genuine sense of belonging."

Attention to how AI will change workplaces and opportunities needs to be balanced with a people-first commitment, one that focuses on developing different capabilities and capacities. Factors like metacognitive ability, ethical discernment, empathic leadership, and systems thinking can serve as a rallying point for educators if they come together in an effort to preserve our humanity and connections with each other. Advocates say that the major return on investment of humanities education is cultivating these characteristics and the bottom line is that higher education is human, by contrast to AI. The most recent Student Voice survey reinforces the importance of students' believing that they matter and reinforcing the journey of discovering purpose as central to students' seeing college attendance as important. Mattering, whether for students or scholars, can be drained out of learning as AI gains prominence as an information seeking and sorting method. However, AI does not have, nor is it likely to be able to replace, human intuition in the discovery and dissemination of knowledge. The Dean at the University of Texas Law School implored colleagues to hold to Socratic methods in teaching "to ensure students are not distracted or reliant upon their screens while engaging in dialogue in class."

A trend that is likely to pick up speed is universities moving away from content delivery and toward "the slow work of bringing students into communities where judgement is practiced, arguments are tested, ethical responsibility is learned, and intellectual seriousness is modeled by other human beings." The old industrial era university controlled knowledge rather than interrogating and connecting to a vast and emergent body of knowledge outside its walls.The fact that employers see college degree attainment as more important in the age of AI should be encouraging to current students and should be part of every institution's recruitment stragegy.

Adam Becker, in More of Everything, predicts that higher education could become increasingly enmeshed with AI companies and oligarchs. An example is the Silicon Valley AI Academy that is a credential targeting 16 to 22 year olds as an alternative to college degrees. To avoid further entanglement, higher education must define itself as a counterweight to AI. Specifically, higher education cultivates learning that goes beyond technical capability. Broader education matters because in cultivates "the ability to think critically. This includes being able to understand AI, as those who do will be better positioned to shape how it's used ethically and responsibly." As the AI revolution continues to unfold, some caution against efforts to shut it down, those committed to cultivate written skills say that judgement and attention to one's audience must be preserved, and the full taxonomy of dangers offered by some are alarmist.

Elon University's "Human Purpose in Peril" report found that, while 65% of respondents used AI chatbots within the last week, 59% worried about their and others' use. Most worrying are the 55% who fear AI will diminish critical thinking skills and 46% who thought that humans' motivation and purpose in life will decline. Obviously, a large proportion of the population are concerned about the human impact of AI.

Collage AI hired a former Berklee School of Music on-line innovator, Carin Nuemberg, as head of academic strategy and partnerships to foster collaboration with faculty using AI. She was drawn to AI because it reminded her of the skepticism that was pervasive as on-line education emerged. Her vision is to create a space where faculty and students can "question, experiment, iterate and improve" the use of AI. As an example of changing perspectives, Scott Latham turned within a year from opposition to encouraging colleges and universities to prepare for the growing impact of AI.

The invasion of AI clearly can't be ignored. Although a small sample, 2 in 3 Harvard professors indicate that AI has had a "somewhat negative" or "negative" impact with almost all imposing policies to control its use in their courses. The hesitation among Harvard faculty is likely mirrored across U.S. and international higher education and concerns are being raised that the rapid deployment of AI is not being matched with policies to protect students.

As higher education becomes more resigned to the destiny that AI will create, it isn't only the classroom that will feel the impact. Formulation of institutional communications is a trend being led by Duke and Washington Universities. The article introducing the trend said that use of AI can help "people determine clear goals, identify appropriate audiences and define key messages, using a tone and language that will resonate" with stakeholders. Administrators are increasingly utilizing AI to research and formulate responses quickly, but consulting AI rather than one's colleagues not only reduces the impact of human talent but it reinforces a dysfunctional view of leadership - that consulting one source is enough.

The President of Wai Kee Kau University predicts that AI will transform higher education in positive ways. It can make providing feedback to students on assignments easier, allowing faculty to focus on more critical responsibilities. The impact on students is that, with AI assistance, they can move from content mastery to navigation and application of knowledge. These benefits come with a shift in responsibility for learning - it is both students and faculty who should engage and shape learning. This paradigm shift reinforces the importance of experience-based learning (e.g. internships) in career readiness. But this preparation should include a scaffolding of a "coherent series of increasingly complex experiences through which students encounter possibilities, exercise agency, produce evidence, receive feedback, defend their choices, build relationships and determine what comes next."

Student success can be increased through AI by deploying it purposefully, including: identifying struggling students, understanding why students turn to AI for emotional support, and teaching students how to use AI effectively and responsibly. AI, social-emotional support, and knowing you belong are all part of career preparation that is developmental rather than episodic. While faculty and administrators focus most carefully on their own area of responsibility, it is the integrative and ongoing experience of students that typically achieves the best outcomes.

Administrative hierarchy, disciplinary provincialism, and obsession with individual and organizational competitive superiority are the hurdles that educators face. After 50+ years as a participant in organizations infested with these dynamics and now a continuing observer, I can't state more emphatically how important it is to get serious about breaking down these barriers and joining together in serving students by striving to future-proof them for the changing world we inhabit.