The advent of accessible and low-cost AI tools like ChatGPT has changed the landscape of work and school. Schools and universities have, by and large, struggled to develop policies to address the usage of such tools, and several of the college students we spoke with in researching this article said that most of their professors who have concerns about AI tools simply ban the use of it altogether, corroborating what seems to be a widespread trend.
The spread of AI tools coincides with other troubling developments, including students arriving to college unprepared to read full-length novels, having never written papers longer than a few pages, and, yes, outsourcing many of the pedagogically critical parts of college learning to AI.
Yet while the problems purportedly being caused by AI are certainly exacerbated by the accessibility of these tools, AI is actually not the cause. In particular, there are two long term-trends that have intensified the challenges that colleges and universities are facing today.
First is the commodification of the college education, in which colleges consider students “customers” of a paid service by the university. Second, high school curricula – particularly in the US – are so geared towards standardised testing that we’ve lost sight of the priority of preparing students for adulthood and life.
In addition, the changing job market and rise of influencer culture has made the traditional post-college work path both unstable and unappealing to a generation that has learned that both content creator and influencer are viable careers that do not require college degrees. The confluence of these factors has made college degrees seem more like a credential and a stepping stone rather than a critically important developmental experience.
We believe that doing the hard work of learning in college is still worth it, especially in an ever-changing job market
Despite these trends, we believe that doing the hard work of learning in college is still worth it, especially in an ever-changing job market. As technology continues to develop, the benefits of college work will be found less in the content of college classes and more in the skills that those classes inculcate in students.
As an example, in a world where 25% of all new code at Google is developed by AI, the raw content knowledge of software engineering and coding languages become much less important to teach than the critical thinking, logic, and problem solving skills that computer science degrees impart on students. It is these sorts of skills, we suggest, that will help today’s students weather the ever-changing world in which they find themselves.
We can’t predict the future, but we know that as our technological capabilities continue to develop, the path to success in the job market will not look as sure or as clear as it did in the past. College is a critical opportunity to equip students with the skills that will help them be resilient in the face of whatever will come. Thinking of college as an opportunity to develop important skills such as tolerating frustration, grappling with hard questions, critical thinking, and building logical arguments is, we argue, even more important in the face of the uncertainty that today’s young people are facing.
The response to this has largely been to blame young people for responding, frankly, quite rationally, to the incentives that society has created. Instead, those of us in the education space need to do a better job of making the case for taking college work seriously. This requires a reevaluation of college-level assignments through the lens of skill development and mastery, rather than simply assessing content knowledge.
It may also require honest and transparent conversations with college students to explain the pedagogical reasoning behind the assignments. Part of this entails treating our students like adults and having honest and transparent conversations with them about the purpose of education. Learners learn better when they are bought into the purpose of learning. In fact, psychology researcher David Yeager demonstrates the critical importance of showing respect to learners and how that dramatically increases their likelihood of meeting the high standards we hold them to.
No matter where AI takes us in the next few years or decades, there are inherently valuable skills that we will want our future generations to master. Teachers of college students should prioritise skills such as critical thinking, learning to construct coherent arguments, teaching one’s brain to persevere through challenging (or boring!) assignments, and figuring out the boundaries of one’s own moral, philosophical, and ethical positions on important issues. In a world that is both fast-changing and constantly shaped by new tools such as AI, these skills will equip students to be resilient to an unpredictable future.
No matter where AI takes us in the next few years or decades, there are inherently valuable skills that we will want our future generations to master
It’s also worth spending some time normalising the research that indicates that the low-tech way of doing things actually does yield better pedagogical results. For example, students who take notes by hand rather than typing on the computer understand the lecture material better. In addition, new research shows that reading books on paper rather than on the computer leads to better recall of the reading material.
Thus, unless students have a specific accessibility need for tech, they may learn and retain more by working on paper rather than a computer. Neuroscience research also finds that “grit” or the ability to persevere through effortful mental activities (such as writing a term paper, learning to code, or working through a complex mathematical proof) is an important predictor of future success, both academic and non-academic.
Yet these findings are rarely shared with learners in the classroom, either because the knowledge is assumed or because we don’t think students need to be clued into meta-discussions on pedagogy. But in a world where AI makes outsourcing the challenging and important work of learning so attractive, educators need to communicate their goals with their students and be realistic about the ways in which AI can promote efficiency.
At the end of the day, it is up to educators to make the case for doing the hard work in college, and for the much-delayed gratification of gaining both the content knowledge and the skills needed for students to succeed in the long run.
