When Life Gives the Workforce AI . . .
What can higher ed do to help students prepare?
A recent conversation in The New York Times between a selection of prominent academics and industry leaders continues the deeply interesting and ultimately unknowable question of how AI will impact our jobs in the future. One offhand comment jumped out, as it could provide a roadmap for higher ed as it looks to prepare students to live with AI. To quote:
[A] lot of knowledge work, in the end . . . comes down to persuading people of things.1
In other words, future successful knowledge workers will be those who can persuade others to join them and contribute either their skills or resources in the pursuit of a certain task. Of course, getting others to adopt your view of the world has always been an important prerequisite to success in any (relatively) free market economy, but unpacking the comment allows us to work backwards to what higher ed should be providing students in preparation for entering the AI world.
Generating Trust
What does it take to persuade people to join your cause, whether it be big or small? It takes trust. And how is trust generated? It is generated by personal relationships combined with demonstrating both a specific and a broad understanding of the task at hand. You can have a personal relationship with someone, but at the same time know you’d never trust them as a business partner. One might have a very niche skill, but if that skill isn’t tied to some greater understanding of how it could help others, then it isn’t going to be adopted, employed, or invested in by someone else. Conversely, many might wax eloquently about big picture ideals, but lack a sufficient understanding of the details required by any particular task. If that’s the case, they’re going to have a hard time getting others to join their grand plans.
So then, how does one go about “getting good” at fostering personal relationships? They spend time with others trying to get things done—in person.2 This strongly suggests that online college learning should be resisted by those who want to thrive in an AI-infused world. It’s too hard to create deep relationships in a class done solely over Zoom.
Conversely, helping students hone their real-time interaction skills can be the raison d'être of traditional residential colleges. After all, writing is becoming less important given that it’s both easy to produce apart from human thinking and, relatedly, losing its ability to persuade. What is not diminishing in impact, however, is the power of an in-person conversation where two people are focused on exchanging ideas. Students’ relationship muscles can be trained in residential halls housing roommates from all over the country, in seminars with quirky professors who start off strict but end beloved, during group work where one member inevitably isn’t pulling their weight, and in the dining halls while enjoying cereal one was never allowed to eat as a kid.
My co-founder and I travel a lot. And we joke that we need to travel more, because nothing innovative ever gets done over Zoom. Of course, when a team knows each other and the task and roles are well-defined, virtual work can be great (for example, almost all of our operations are run virtually, which allows us to give our colleagues flexibility and search for the best talent without geographic constraints). In fact, in a previous life as a corporate lawyer, I’d see billion-dollar-plus deals be executed over conference calls with participants never even knowing what each other looked like.
But since I’m now in the business of coming up with ideas that will solve our clients’ problems, we have to be in person. This allows us to get the undivided attention of our current and potential clients, to be able to iterate in real time, and to ultimately be able to garner trust. Much of the day-to-day of higher ed administration might be on Zoom, but anything new that moves the needle starts with in-person interaction.
The pursuit of knowledge? Ok, sure, fine. But college in the popular mind is about the undergrad experience, where the process of learning is more important than the product of learning. Residential colleges should lean into the fact that they are a low-stakes crucible for helping young adults understand that relationships are needed to get anything done.
Professors Provide Glimpses3 into the Real World
One type of college relationship—the relationship with a professor or instructor—helps students understand what it means to have sufficient expertise about a specific topic. A big part of college is adapting to a higher academic standard. This means that papers are more sophisticated, tests cover more material, and studying takes more time. Students receive feedback in the form of comments and grades in a way that prepares them for the feedback that they will receive in the workforce. One professor of mine in college often talked about the learning process that comes when students are forced to do repeated drafts of a paper. They hand in something they think is close to being finished, only to receive detailed comments back that show just how far they still have to go. I still have a vivid memory of when I went to talk with my advisor about the first draft of my graduation thesis, only to be told, “You really can’t write”. Thanks to this straight talk, I got my act together and produced higher-quality work than I otherwise would have.
Students must learn to be detail-oriented and how to create with care. All this feedback, regardless of how it is delivered, is helping 20-year-old students get closer to the standards required for someone to present themselves as truly understanding a certain discrete topic, whether it be the American Revolution, a math proof, or a business plan.
Big Beautiful Pictures
But to be persuasive, one still needs to connect one's discrete expertise with the proverbial big picture. Someone might have great expertise in something that looks impressive (knitting, juggling, solving Rubik’s Cubes), but if they’re not able to connect it to larger ideas that a customer cares about, they are not going to get paid.4
We learned this building InitialView: Our growth hasn’t only come from explaining what our interviews and videos do, but from connecting them to what is being lost in admissions and the classroom—authenticity, voice, and real-time engagement.
This suggests an enduring role for liberal arts. By engaging with big-picture ideas that drive individuals and history, students can better enter the workforce and demonstrate to bosses and clients how their ideas can solve their problems. Learning broad concepts in economics, philosophy, history, sociology, psychology, and literature can foster the ability to make connections and facilitate conversations with more senior decision-makers. The liberal arts are even more valuable now that Claude and ChatGPT can help with analyzing and manipulating data, skills that used to take years to develop. LLMs can’t help you determine what is important or where you should look—but the liberal arts, coupled with deep relationships that are intentionally fostered in a residential community, can.
At the end of the day, we don’t know how our jobs will change because of AI. But we can know that trust will be a necessary component in professional success, fostered by those who are best at real-time engagement. And for young adults who want to start honing their real-time engagement skills, that can best be done in a residential college.5
This comment comes from Dean Ball, formerly an adviser on A.I. and emerging technology for the Trump administration, who is now a senior fellow at the Foundation for American Innovation. The other members of the interview were Daron Acemoglu, economist at M.I.T. and a Nobel laureate, Ethan Mollick, professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and the author of “Co-Intelligence” and the forthcoming “Co-Existence”, and Clara Shih, former top A.I. executive at Salesforce and Meta, co-founder of New Work Foundation, a nonprofit that aims to help entry-level workers navigate A.I.
Not these Glimpses. These are designed to provide professors/admissions officers with a look into a student’s real world. Couldn’t resist.
Of course, there are examples of knitters, jugglers, and perhaps Rubik’s Cube-solvers being paid, but in each instance it’s because the expert is connecting their skill to something more broadly needed (the warmth and pleasure that comes from wearing a one-of-a-kind sweater, the need for someone to entertain the kids during a birthday party, or online entertainment that racks up views and advertising opportunities).
A detractor might ask, “But what about learning these skills in the workforce?” to which we would respond: “Yes, a significant amount of learning does occur in the workforce, and a mistake many high-achieving students make when they start their real jobs is not realizing how little they know and how long it takes to acquire professional expertise.” However, the workforce is not a great place to learn big ideas. To those privileged to attend, college can be a great sandbox in which to prepare for the real world.