In July, Gallup and Lumina Foundation released new survey data showing that Americans’ confidence in higher education had slipped backward after a modest improvement the previous year.
Only 38 percent of U.S. adults now report having a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in higher education, down from 42 percent last year and 57 percent in 2015. Respondents pointed to several reasons for their skepticism, including cost, political agendas and concerns about whether colleges adequately prepare students for the workforce.
But one new finding deserves particular attention.
For the first time, the survey asked Americans how artificial intelligence might affect the importance of college degrees during the next five years. Forty-six percent said AI would make degrees less important. Only 20 percent thought degrees would become more important, while 33 percent expected no change.
The results were closely connected to respondents’ existing confidence in higher education. Among people who lacked confidence in higher education, 64 percent believed AI would make college degrees less important. Among those who remained confident, only 32 percent expected degrees to lose importance.
We should be careful about what these findings mean.
The survey does not establish that AI caused the decline in confidence. Instead, it shows that people who already question the value of higher education are especially likely to see AI as another reason a degree may no longer be necessary.
That perception should concern college and university leaders.
It also suggests that higher education has not adequately explained its role in an AI-driven society.
The public conversation about AI too often begins with replacement.
Will AI replace entry-level employees?
Will it replace instructors?
Will it replace traditional assignments?
Will it make certain majors, skills or degrees obsolete?
These questions are understandable, but they lead us toward the wrong conversation. The more useful question is this:
How can people learn to use AI to perform nonhuman tasks more efficiently while preserving their time and attention for the work that requires human judgment, creativity, empathy and responsibility?
AI can summarize documents, organize information, generate preliminary ideas, identify patterns and automate routine processes. It can help people complete many tasks faster.
But efficiency is not the same as wisdom.
AI cannot decide which problems are worth solving. It cannot assume moral responsibility for a decision. It cannot genuinely understand another person’s lived experience. It cannot build trust, exercise courage, navigate a difficult human relationship or determine what a community ought to value.
Those are human responsibilities.
This is where higher education can become more important, not less.
Colleges should certainly teach students how to use AI. Graduates need practical experience selecting appropriate tools, evaluating outputs, recognizing bias, protecting confidential information and knowing when AI should not be used.
But AI proficiency alone is not enough.
Students must also learn to ask better questions, evaluate evidence, communicate across differences, exercise ethical judgment, work collaboratively and solve complicated problems involving real people. They must develop the ability to recognize where technological capability ends and human responsibility begins.
That requires more than technical training. It requires the broader development of the person.
Higher education has always been about more than transferring information or preparing someone to complete a list of workplace tasks. At its best, it helps people become thoughtful professionals, informed citizens and capable human beings.
In the AI age, that mission is not outdated. It is urgent.
The problem is that institutions often communicate the value of college as though the world has not changed. They promote programs, credentials and career outcomes, but do not always clearly explain how the educational experience prepares graduates to work alongside intelligent technologies.
The value proposition must become more explicit.
A college education should help students understand:
• What AI can do
• How to use it effectively and ethically
• How to evaluate what it produces
• When not to rely on it
• Which decisions must remain human
• How to lead, communicate and solve problems in an increasingly automated workplace
Higher education will not rebuild public confidence simply by insisting that degrees remain valuable. Institutions will have to demonstrate how their curricula, teaching practices and student experiences are changing.
They must show that students are not being prepared to compete against AI.
They are being prepared to work with AI while contributing the judgment, humanity and accountability that technology cannot provide.
AI does not make education less relevant.
It raises the standard for what a meaningful education must accomplish.