What Will College Look Like?
I’m worried about what higher education will look like for my boys.
College for me was a transformative place. It’s where I met my wife, where I found people who shared my interests and views of the world. It’s where I finally stopped being afraid to say the words that were rattling around in my head. It's where I stopped being a child, even if I was not yet an adult.
Reading all the variations of the question "What is college for in the age of AI?" make me sad, of course, but I can't help but feel that they are missing the point. The value of college, for me, was only tangentially related to the classes or the coursework. The real value was being a place where I could live away from my parents without being fully on my own. I could live in the a lite version of the real world and get a taste for it, without being thrown directly into yawning maw of capitalism.
I do get why that aspect of college goes under-reported. Wealth inequality has grown so extreme, and worker power has declined so dramatically, that kids and their parents feel forced to look at college as a strictly utilitarian investment. It's a box to check so that there might someday be some prospect for a comfortable job and a middle class lifestyle. Personal and social development are luxuries that can be quickly discarded in favor of cold economic reasoning. Having lifelong friends and a well rounded sense of self are nice, but they don't buy groceries, and they certainly won't get you a down payment on a house.
So what will college look like in ~15 years? Will it again be a luxury for the heirs wealthy? If the job market decides that a degree is worthless (because AI has decimated white collar work,) then it stands to reason that middle and lower class kids will stop buying them. To survive, elite institutions will raise their prices and cater exclusively to the upper crust of the upper class, the same way that big swaths of the goods and services economy are already doing. Once they're there, what exactly is the incentive to provide financial aid to top high school kids that lack trust funds? If those kids can't get a job then they can't donate, if they can't donate then they're worthless alumni to the institution, if they're worthless to the institution then they won't get scholarships.
Big state schools might be able to hang on out of inertia and tax dollars, but they'll probably look more like commuter schools than the vibrant communities that I was a part of. Families that do pursue college will need to save money on room and board. Whatever a degree is worth, that value won't be enhanced by staying on campus. Clubs and organizations will close. What good is student government when the students don't share a common identity anymore.
This is probably an overly pessimistic take. In a capitalist system, though, it doesn't seem like the wrong direction to be thinking. Where is the value? To whom will it accrue?
My college years were some of the happiest of my life. Part of that is youth and lack of responsibility, no question. Still it makes me sad to see so many people questioning (and to be questioning myself) the fundamental utility of this place that I cherish. Not everything has to be boiled down to its competitive advantage (or disadvantage) but that is the world, and the system, in which we live.