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.

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.

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."

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. 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. 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.

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.

Adam Becker, in More of Everything, predicts that higher education could become increasingly enmeshed with AI companies and oligarchs. To avoid this Becker suggests that 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."

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.