The Convergence of Higher Education, Underemployment, and AI
All my favorite topics in one newsletter
Jonah, my beloved oldest son, is putting in another 12-hour day at the country club. Tomorrow, he’ll finish his final assignment for his last college class. On Tuesday, he’ll work at his second gig — proofreading sample queries for an AI company. In another month, he’ll relocate to New Zealand for a year, where he’ll most likely continue working in the food industry and for AI companies.
On Saturday, we’ll pick up Ian from college. After a short break, he’ll start his summer internship programming for an AI company that helps little children overcome dyslexia. He found the job through a recruiting company that specializes in neurodiverse workers, so we have to pay the company $900 to employ him. The alternative was scanning barcodes at Best Buy.
My kids are the vanguard of the new job market—working multiple jobs, making themselves irrelevant by contributing to the growth of AI systems, and working jobs that typically don’t attract college graduates. I like to think that their situation is temporary. Perhaps they’ll find permanent positions at these AI companies. Perhaps they’ll find a solid place within the waves of the new economy.
Underemployment
When a young adult with a degree in sociology from the University of Maryland has a job at Home Depot, that’s underemployment. Underemployment means taking a position that is normally staffed with a worker with less educational attainment.
Most of my friends’ twenty-something kids are living in their old bedrooms in their parents’ homes and are underemployed. They have jobs as nannies, sales clerks, and restaurant managers. In fact, I’ve stopped asking my friends about their kids. It’s a sore topic, especially for my friends who sent their kids to Ivy League colleges.
Recent studies show that fifty-two percent of college grads are underemployed a year after graduation. And those numbers don’t budge much over time. Ten years later, 45 percent of college graduates are underemployed.
New labor market data shows which majors are the best and worst for underemployment. The best degree is nursing, with only 10% underemployed. The worst outcomes are students with degrees in criminal justice (67%), performing arts (62%), and medical technology (60%). Distressingly, only half of all political science majors have college-level work.
Artificial Intelligence
AI is coming. The job that you are doing right now probably won’t exist in five to ten years. Social workers, therapists, coaches, and writers. Probably teachers and doctors. Those jobs will be changed forever.
Some of this change will be good. AI will replace the drudgery of IEP-writing and other education jobs that nobody is doing particularly well.
I welcome AI’s entry into government bureaucracy — it would streamline the massive clusterfuck that is the Medicaid/disability system. Humans take three years to process the paperwork, which will be done in five seconds by AI. There is no downside, except to the workers who supported their families with the salaries from those jobs.
But AI can’t do everything well. In the future, a computer will scan my face for worrisome skin cancer cells, but I will miss out on the chit-chat with a real dermatologist, who might discover something else worrisome on my elbow.
There’s no doubt that AI has enabled college students to cheat on writing assignments. They aren’t researching the causes of World War 1 by digging through dusty tomes in the library. They aren’t writing five-page essays comparing Jane Austen to Charlotte Brontë. They certainly aren’t doing the massive amount of reading necessary to begin those assignments. ChatGPT is doing it all for them. And they are dumber for it.
My college professor friends are trying to solve that problem with in-class, written assignments, but it’s fingers in the dike. Small solutions to overwhelming problems.
Cynicism and Hope
Maybe college students aren’t working hard because they know that there’s no point. If they see their future will involve managing high-end sushi restaurants, it is probably pointless to put effort into a Jane Austen article.
A recent article in the Independent said that Gen Z is giving up on the 9-5 career track, because they say it isn’t working for them. The cost of living is going up, while AI replaces their jobs. Instead, they are working multiple jobs and investing their money.
Others are angry and supporting questionable heroes like Luigi Mangione. Still others lead quiet, frugal lives, often in their parents’ homes.
We’re living through weird times for sure. But I also think there are opportunities for those who muscle through the tough job market, who have honed their minds by writing essays for themselves, and who read the newspaper and see trends. The smart and entrepreneurial types will be at the helm during the period of change.
More
I hope everyone had a wonderful Mother’s Day. I spend my day getting pampered, gardening, and having lunch outside with family. It was lovely.
You can catch me talking with Rebecca Resnik about colleges and autistic children on her podcast, Cultivating Excellence Podcast.
Watching: Andor (rewatched Season 1, now watching Season 2), Last of Us, Hacks, Conclave
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