In mainstream American culture, many people have been bashing certain kinds of liberal arts degrees for a long time.
It was decades ago that the critics started talking about how English majors, or philosophy majors, or history majors, for example, were likely to inhabit their parents’ attics or basements after graduation. Et tu, Garrison Keillor.
That was well before we started to automate all kinds of knowledge work decades later.
Sometimes, these days, it seems like we’re automating more of the white-collar stuff then the basics, where robots could be moving furniture, and painting houses, and taking out the garbage.
Artificial intelligence has cut through industries like accounting and legal like a hot knife through butter. Paralegal jobs are getting automated. So are reporting jobs. And don’t forget: the large language models can write poetry, too, or compose songs.
So what’s the future of the liberal arts degree?
Holding the Computers Accountable
It’s not hard to find essays by technology enthusiasts, talking about how the humanities graduates will provide the human touch that modern processes still need in the age of AI.
“It will be important for students to learn to harness the power of AI,” writes Emily Todd, Dean of Arts and Sciences at Eastern Connecticut State University. “In order to do so, they’ll need to evaluate different AI tools, assess the content and responses AI generates, and recognize biases baked into the algorithms and source information from which AI pulls. Their liberal arts training and education will prepare them to use AI responsibly. Through their studies, they grapple with difficult questions. They learn to look at challenges from multiple perspectives.”
“Students who earn degrees in liberal arts and humanities may actually have an advantage in the job market over those who specialize in STEM-based programming,” writes Danielle McLean at Higher Ed Dive, quoting Robert Gibson, director of instructional design at Wichita State University Campus of Applied Sciences and Technology.
These are vociferous and somewhat compelling thoughts about how we’ll view these disciplines in 20 years.
All that said, there are still some practical issues to think about when you’re advising young people on their careers.
I talked to Joe Shelly, VP of libraries at Hamilton College, at Davos this January at our IIA event, about the liberal arts degree’s future.
Shelly noted the “eye-opening pace of change” and talked about how professionals experience “aha moments” (my phrase) as they encounter AI at every turn.
“The great thing about our librarians is: they have roughly 1000 years’ worth of experience as a profession, (on) the understanding of information ecologies, nevermind whether that information is in a book or being generated by an LLM,” he said. “These are the folks that can really help students navigate truth and fiction, understand what the world’s going to look like, how to interrogate sources, how to be critical about the way we consume and distribute information in the future.”
The Power of Critical Thinking
Making a case for the American university as a whole, Shelly argued that these are the great institutions best positioned to solve problems that haven’t been created yet. He mentioned hearing Yann LeCun, prior head of research at Meta, talking about the “inspiring piece of change” and suggesting gen AI has about 3 to 5 years.
“That’s a message I want to take back and deliver to our students right now, to make sure that they deeply understand that this world is evolving while they’re in college,” he said. “They’re going to be the contributors to what’s being invented right now.”
Pick Your Best Major
We also talked a bit about the changing choices that our young people make. In past years, Shelly pointed out, students have been likely to major in business for practicality, and then choose a second major that represents their passion, whether that’s art, language, history or anything else.
Ultimately, we agreed, students may not have to do that anymore, because AI will be able to be embedded in any college discipline.
(Later in the interview, I talked about holding a first edition de Toqueville book, and being there when the Alexander Hamilton statue was put up).
A Time Like No Other
Ruminating on the history of communications, Shelly talked about writing as a way to express thinking, and theorized about the possible frameworks we’ll have in place to craft the future. You can hear more in the video, but this conversation, to me, illustrated what’s going to happen to education as AI continues to evolve.
