AI-Proofing Your Career Starts in College
The job market has never offered any guarantees. Mechanization wiped out once-secure careers in manufacturing. Now artificial intelligence (AI) is coming for a future generation of jobs that had seemed safe, starting with software coding and back-office work. So what can we do about it?
Despite some hyperbolic fears, there are reasons to be optimistic about the future of technology. It has the potential to bring a better quality of life and more widespread prosperity — eventually. To prosper in this future, workers will need new skills and a different education. And that means rethinking how we approach college and what we want it to provide us.
Most college degrees pay off not only in higher wages but because they mean graduates are less likely to be unemployed, or will be unemployed for less time. Evolving technology in the late 20th century put a higher premium on more education, leading more people to go to college. The share of the population over age 25 with some post-secondary education doubled between 1980 and 2021 to more than 60%. This increased the supply of graduates and also shrunk the wage premium for college degrees.
More people going to college also means more bad outcomes: more dropouts and more degrees that don't pay off. Meanwhile, the price of education has skyrocketed. So no surprise that many people are asking if college is even worth it anymore.
It is. In fact, with new technology coming our way it will be more valuable than ever.
If the past is any guide, thriving in an age of technological innovation requires being adaptable and finding different ways to add value. For example, machines that could weave cloth at scale displaced many workers, but master craftsmen who made exceptional-quality goods
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