Already juggling class schedules and roommate quirks, here’s one more item for first-year college students’ mental checklist: Artificial intelligence is coming for their jobs.
It’s not yet evident whether AI will transform white-collar positions or eliminate them altogether. Nor is it known whether people will be replaced by machines, or by workers who have the AI skills they lack. What is clear is that the warnings about what are often called knowledge jobs, the kind of positions college graduates could once count on, are on the rise.
“There’s a broader sense of foreboding in the air about the value of education in an age of artificial intelligence,” Harvard College’s new dean, David Deming, told incoming first-year students earlier this month.
Why We Wrote This
Artificial intelligence is taking some jobs once handled by humans. The emerging technology is also creating new opportunities, and college students are adjusting their majors to prepare for the future workplace.
And students are listening.
“I don’t want to be one of the people who’s unemployed by the time I leave college,” says Oluwamayokun Lawal, a computer science major at Saint Louis University. Mr. Lawal, a college junior, has shifted the certificates, or areas of study, he’s pursuing in school to make himself more AI savvy and employable.
Courtesy of Oluwamayokun Lawal
“It definitely is a defining factor of how I want to do my work,” says Maria Anzalotti, a junior at Emerson College in Boston, who has a strong interest in writing. “Knowing that AI exists … makes me want to make sure I am a superhuman, emphasis on human, writer.”
Both professions are considered at high risk of AI disruption. With the technology already generating 20% or more of their new software code, tech leaders are predicting mass layoffs by 2030.
Big tech’s hiring of new college graduates has already collapsed to 7% of all hires, less than half the share in 2019, according to a May report by venture capital firm SignalFire.
“The AI revolution is beginning to have a significant and disproportionate impact on entry-level workers in the American labor market,” said a study last month by Stanford University’s Digital Economy Lab. It found a 13% decline in employment for workers ages 22 to 25 in the most AI-exposed occupations.
Writing is considered one of those occupations. An analysis of more than 900,000 new Web pages (once the playground of literature, history, and creative writing majors) found that nearly three-quarters of those pages included AI-generated content.
Sharing space with AI
A year ago, Merritt Hughes didn’t think smart machines would have much impact on an intended career in journalism. Then, during an AI and journalism course this spring, the Emerson College junior noticed how much large news organizations were already incorporating the technology as a research and analysis tool.
It was a turnoff.
“I could see myself going to a much smaller paper first – honestly, writing for a nonprofit or something like that – just because I feel that aligns a lot more with my morals,” the college junior says.
Accounting is one of those AI-threatened industries. In the past year, all four major firms, Deloitte, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Ernst & Young, and KPMG, have laid off workers or announced the potential elimination of positions to the tune of a few thousand collectively.
“They can use AI to reconfigure jobs,” says Matthew Anderson, an accounting professor and associate dean of diversity, equity, and inclusion at Michigan State University. The paradox is that such cuts at the low end mean hiring more-skilled people. The university is working on how to upskill its undergraduates so they can qualify for those higher-skilled jobs.
Accounting majors need “more finance skills, a few more computer skills and analytic skills, the ability to use big data sets and manipulate those better,” he adds.
The potential for upside
But that’s only one side of the picture. The evidence so far suggests that rather than replacing workers, the technology is a tool making humans more productive. AI use jumped from a year ago, the New York Federal Reserve Bank found in a survey of regional businesses in August. But it also found that so far AI has had no significant impact on job numbers. Some companies are hiring because of the technology, a blog post from the bank points out.
Courtesy of Maria Anzalotti
In industries more exposed to AI, revenue per employee is growing at triple the speed of other sectors, according to the latest survey by global consulting firm PwC. Wages are rising at double the speed.
Then there are the new jobs the technology will create.
An explosion of interest
By 2030, AI will eliminate 92 million jobs worldwide, but it will also create 170 million new ones, the World Economic Forum predicts. That would be a net gain of 7% of the global job market, open to college students and others with the right skills in AI.
Anecdotally, “I feel the students are still upbeat about it,” says Luay Nakhleh, dean of the School of Engineering and Computing at Rice University. “They read all the articles about company X not hiring entry-level software developers. But they also understand at least two points: … We teach them strong fundamentals so that no matter where the field goes, they will be ready for it. [And second,] if anything, they’ll be much stronger if they get exposed to AI and the tools.”
The University of Pennsylvania’s engineering school has also launched its first undergraduate AI major this year and is seeing an explosion of interest.
When Chris Callison-Burch, a computer science professor, began teaching the school’s lone AI course before ChatGPT exploded on the scene, he had 150 students. This year, he expects nearly five times that number, filling the largest lecture hall on campus to its 400-seat capacity with another 300 students online.
“The sentiment is: It’s better to understand how to use AI than not at all,” he adds.
Many college students agree.
“I’ve stuck with math, but I’ve definitely changed how I’ve approached my personal learning, especially outside of the classroom,” says Gabe Riedel, a senior at California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo, California. He’s taken some online courses on how to use AI. “It’ll definitely take away certain jobs, but I also think it has the opportunity to provide new jobs.”
AI is what drew Grace Koepke to American University. The college junior is enrolled in a dual-degree program where she will eventually get a master’s in analytics and AI.
“I wanted to study something that would actually prepare me for the future,” Ms. Koepke writes in an email response to a Monitor reporter’s questions. “Companies want people who understand machine learning, automation, ethical AI, and how to turn data into real insights. That combination of business knowledge and AI literacy isn’t super common yet, so I think it gives me a competitive edge.”
Monitor staff writers Laurent Belsie and Hannah Goeke reported from Boston; Ira Porter reported from Dover, Delaware; and Goodluck Ajeh reported from Elsah, Illinois.
