Why not eliminate the pull factor from employers. If most jobs don't really require a degree anyway, make hiring by merit a thing. Blind hiring. When you can't see the person, and they take basic tests of competency to sift through the applications. College is no longer associated with IQ. Undergrads typically test out at around 100, which is, mediocre, or median.
There must be an easier way to get kids drunk and hooked up with a mate.
There's a court case right now of a kid who got 1590s on his SATs was normal in all respects but of the wrong race to get into an extremely selective college. Failing at all of his applications he instead went to work directly at Google as an L4 level engineer which starts at $190 and median is $286K.
I think the degree requirement makes sense as a proxy of “stick-to-it-Ivness”.
If you have to stomach to sit through four years of lectures, homework, essays and tests which require significant effort and time, you are less likely to cut and run the first time you face à challenge at work.
Having said that I think AI is making students weaker and lazier. But there are ways around that.
You are of course correct. College also teaches people how to act in the company of smart and educated folks. How to conduct oneself, or that is the hope.
Yes, I was going to make the same point - whatever your major was, your bachelor's degree demonstrates that you can set a clock, meet goals and deadlines, follow rules, etc. It's an indicator of middle-class attitudes, with salaries hopefully to follow. Thanks, Mr. Haydel, for this excellent post!
"Achieving a high test score and turning in a well-written paper are no longer finish lines that can only be crossed after months of daily, sequential training."
The problem really is AI is decoupling degree from IQ. It's now possible to get a college degree by leaning on the AIs instead of your own brain.
Since Griggs v. Duke Power, employers have been prohibited from using IQ tests. However, they still needed a gauge for how smart someone was. Hence the proliferation of degree requirements for employment. Now we make people spend 4 years slogging through a degree to demonstrate something that used to take a 45 min test.
Employers were already watering down the degree requirements for many jobs, but I'm optimistic AI will cause them to abandon it completely. Overturning Griggs would really help. But outside of STEM, there are very few jobs that actually require a BA in anything. (And the best evidence of that is how often you hear: "oh, your major doesn't matter, just whether you graduate.")
The observation that AI is facilitating much of) higher education’s rush towards degree-mill nirvana is either insightful (if shared by academics) or bitter (if shared by unemployable graduates). But it begs the questions of what value higher education ought to be and what AI really brings to the table.
Regarding the former (what education ought to do), I’m post-neo-Aristotelian. That is, academics ought to help students develop through a curriculum of knowledge, experience, insight, judgment, and emotions (Aristotle’s soul). I’d like to assess the value and effectiveness in terms of these elements rather than in institutional terms of how education is funded and administered.
Regarding the latter (what AI brings to the table), I’m a pre-cloud technologist. That is, the tools of education have always been crude forms of what AI delivers and makes available at orders of magnitude less cost. Long ago students could have an educated Greek slave do their thinking for them—or kings could have a Mentor do it. Treating AI as a pet cheatsheet is no different. Surely academics could figure out a way to evaluate learning without banning AI from their hallowed halls!
Almost 40 years ago, I developed computer assisted language learning (CALL) tools to help Defense Language Institute students learn foreign languages faster and more accurately. The academics back then were busy trying to keep students from using such CALL software; they wanted students to learn from them, the humans! I, at first just a student at DLI (albeit with a degree in foreign language education and a mid-career Air Force officer), wanted fellow students to learn faster. I’d learned foreign languages much earlier by living and studying in Europe and the Middle East for a year as an exchange student. My machine-learning software (nascent AI) offered much of the experience of living overseas to students trapped in urban US junior colleges.
And yes, my software could also instantly produce a translation of long texts which students *could* turn in for credit. Remember, of course, that they were soldiers who could be shot for doing so!
In the half century since I first earned a college degree, I’ve observed exactly the same trends described in this article. Institutional education will always face these pressures and conflicts of interest. They were so evident back then that I determined to homeschool my children! (My wife and I were arrested for it!) So I don’t disagree with anything said in this article—except to say that the problem is more severe and has always been there.
I also agree that current use of AI by students often shortcuts the effort required to do assigned work and write assigned papers. This trend and practice is serious; but no more so than the practice of the majority of students getting degrees without learning very much.
What the article doesn’t drive home is the potential for AI to enhance and speed up true learning without the social distractions of campus life! Admittedly, without a human in control of such AI education, that potential may never be realized. An OLD human. A human with something that AI can never possess: lived experience! (And feelings…)
What about the Americans with Disabilities Act? Students already invoke ADA to have untimed tests, extended submission deadlines, etc. Imagine a student saying: I demand this ADA accommodation because my shrink says I can't cope with a blue book test. Or meet the deadline for submitting the take-home test's essay. Or, I'm neurodivergent, and I can't handwrite anything, so I must have access to my laptop to take the exam instead of handwriting in a blue book. And it has to be my laptop because it's compatible with my neurodivergent tics. And if the exam is in the classroom, there can't be a time limit because...
But yes, we have to give our students on the spectrum and with other disabilities the necessary tech assists. A student with dyslexia told me the other day how much her learning experience changed when she could use a keyboard instead of pen and paper to write (per the Wang column from the other day). I teach a bunch of kids like this, and they want to learn and succeed as much as any other student in class.
There are lots of things worth knowing and intellectual skills worth mastering. But the ability to think critically requires recognizing that someone you disagree with might very well be making an argument as well founded and supported as yours.
Assuming that the Truth exists, can be known, and is worth striving for is the problem not the solution because it makes listening to what someone else has to say a pointless exercise.
Neoliberal economists were convinced that the Truth exists, can be known, was worth striving for and that they possessed it.
Are they really the sort of role models you admire?
Why not eliminate the pull factor from employers. If most jobs don't really require a degree anyway, make hiring by merit a thing. Blind hiring. When you can't see the person, and they take basic tests of competency to sift through the applications. College is no longer associated with IQ. Undergrads typically test out at around 100, which is, mediocre, or median.
There must be an easier way to get kids drunk and hooked up with a mate.
There's a court case right now of a kid who got 1590s on his SATs was normal in all respects but of the wrong race to get into an extremely selective college. Failing at all of his applications he instead went to work directly at Google as an L4 level engineer which starts at $190 and median is $286K.
I think the degree requirement makes sense as a proxy of “stick-to-it-Ivness”.
If you have to stomach to sit through four years of lectures, homework, essays and tests which require significant effort and time, you are less likely to cut and run the first time you face à challenge at work.
Having said that I think AI is making students weaker and lazier. But there are ways around that.
You are of course correct. College also teaches people how to act in the company of smart and educated folks. How to conduct oneself, or that is the hope.
Yes, I was going to make the same point - whatever your major was, your bachelor's degree demonstrates that you can set a clock, meet goals and deadlines, follow rules, etc. It's an indicator of middle-class attitudes, with salaries hopefully to follow. Thanks, Mr. Haydel, for this excellent post!
"Achieving a high test score and turning in a well-written paper are no longer finish lines that can only be crossed after months of daily, sequential training."
The problem really is AI is decoupling degree from IQ. It's now possible to get a college degree by leaning on the AIs instead of your own brain.
Since Griggs v. Duke Power, employers have been prohibited from using IQ tests. However, they still needed a gauge for how smart someone was. Hence the proliferation of degree requirements for employment. Now we make people spend 4 years slogging through a degree to demonstrate something that used to take a 45 min test.
Employers were already watering down the degree requirements for many jobs, but I'm optimistic AI will cause them to abandon it completely. Overturning Griggs would really help. But outside of STEM, there are very few jobs that actually require a BA in anything. (And the best evidence of that is how often you hear: "oh, your major doesn't matter, just whether you graduate.")
How much power to you want the federal government (specifically, the President) to have?
Barely out of college? The author is already ready for the Big Leagues.
The observation that AI is facilitating much of) higher education’s rush towards degree-mill nirvana is either insightful (if shared by academics) or bitter (if shared by unemployable graduates). But it begs the questions of what value higher education ought to be and what AI really brings to the table.
Regarding the former (what education ought to do), I’m post-neo-Aristotelian. That is, academics ought to help students develop through a curriculum of knowledge, experience, insight, judgment, and emotions (Aristotle’s soul). I’d like to assess the value and effectiveness in terms of these elements rather than in institutional terms of how education is funded and administered.
Regarding the latter (what AI brings to the table), I’m a pre-cloud technologist. That is, the tools of education have always been crude forms of what AI delivers and makes available at orders of magnitude less cost. Long ago students could have an educated Greek slave do their thinking for them—or kings could have a Mentor do it. Treating AI as a pet cheatsheet is no different. Surely academics could figure out a way to evaluate learning without banning AI from their hallowed halls!
Almost 40 years ago, I developed computer assisted language learning (CALL) tools to help Defense Language Institute students learn foreign languages faster and more accurately. The academics back then were busy trying to keep students from using such CALL software; they wanted students to learn from them, the humans! I, at first just a student at DLI (albeit with a degree in foreign language education and a mid-career Air Force officer), wanted fellow students to learn faster. I’d learned foreign languages much earlier by living and studying in Europe and the Middle East for a year as an exchange student. My machine-learning software (nascent AI) offered much of the experience of living overseas to students trapped in urban US junior colleges.
And yes, my software could also instantly produce a translation of long texts which students *could* turn in for credit. Remember, of course, that they were soldiers who could be shot for doing so!
In the half century since I first earned a college degree, I’ve observed exactly the same trends described in this article. Institutional education will always face these pressures and conflicts of interest. They were so evident back then that I determined to homeschool my children! (My wife and I were arrested for it!) So I don’t disagree with anything said in this article—except to say that the problem is more severe and has always been there.
I also agree that current use of AI by students often shortcuts the effort required to do assigned work and write assigned papers. This trend and practice is serious; but no more so than the practice of the majority of students getting degrees without learning very much.
What the article doesn’t drive home is the potential for AI to enhance and speed up true learning without the social distractions of campus life! Admittedly, without a human in control of such AI education, that potential may never be realized. An OLD human. A human with something that AI can never possess: lived experience! (And feelings…)
What about the Americans with Disabilities Act? Students already invoke ADA to have untimed tests, extended submission deadlines, etc. Imagine a student saying: I demand this ADA accommodation because my shrink says I can't cope with a blue book test. Or meet the deadline for submitting the take-home test's essay. Or, I'm neurodivergent, and I can't handwrite anything, so I must have access to my laptop to take the exam instead of handwriting in a blue book. And it has to be my laptop because it's compatible with my neurodivergent tics. And if the exam is in the classroom, there can't be a time limit because...
But yes, we have to give our students on the spectrum and with other disabilities the necessary tech assists. A student with dyslexia told me the other day how much her learning experience changed when she could use a keyboard instead of pen and paper to write (per the Wang column from the other day). I teach a bunch of kids like this, and they want to learn and succeed as much as any other student in class.
There are lots of things worth knowing and intellectual skills worth mastering. But the ability to think critically requires recognizing that someone you disagree with might very well be making an argument as well founded and supported as yours.
Assuming that the Truth exists, can be known, and is worth striving for is the problem not the solution because it makes listening to what someone else has to say a pointless exercise.
Neoliberal economists were convinced that the Truth exists, can be known, was worth striving for and that they possessed it.
Are they really the sort of role models you admire?