I think the arguments made are rather weak. There are many assertions made that a survey of data does not necessarily support. I have 3 adult children who have acquired advanced degrees and are quite competent. A doctor, architect and electrical engineer. All received high quality educations. My experience makes me sceptical of the premise.
I'm not persuaded. Especially when I see the claim in the essay that college students can't read a book, but following the link shows an article about college students failing because they can't read a book. The essay somehow neglected to mention the "failing" bit. In general, students at all levels are cheating a lot (and yes, misrepresenting AI's work as your own is cheating), but this is nothing new: students were using various sites to cheat before large language models were a thing. Throughout the pandemic, students were gaming "remote" exam systems to cheat, too. Yes, I suppose the value of college degrees will diminish for colleges who generally allow students to graduate by cheating their way through, and no doubt some short-sighted colleges will succumb to the temptation to close their eyes to the cheating and just collect the tuition. I suppose I can accept that the value of those particular colleges' degrees will go to zero. But colleges that require students to actually learn will persist, they will address the cheating as they have addressed cheating before, and the value of such degrees will remain.
EOs not withstanding, as long as Griggs v Duke Power is on the books, employers will continue to use degrees as a sorting mechanism until it becomes too painful to do so. By painful, I mean some sort of spectacular collapse caused by an incompetent employee. My first thought was that it would be a government employer but government is impervious to this. Perhaps something in the physical world then. Planes falling from sky, bridges collapsing. All this has happened before but not at scale.
I think the arguments made are rather weak. There are many assertions made that a survey of data does not necessarily support. I have 3 adult children who have acquired advanced degrees and are quite competent. A doctor, architect and electrical engineer. All received high quality educations. My experience makes me sceptical of the premise.
Wow! Powerful and well stated. It’s long past time to change higher education and this essay provides the rationale for using AI to do just that.
Add K-12 to this discussion as well! https://futureoflearningdrtwrye.substack.com/
I'm not persuaded. Especially when I see the claim in the essay that college students can't read a book, but following the link shows an article about college students failing because they can't read a book. The essay somehow neglected to mention the "failing" bit. In general, students at all levels are cheating a lot (and yes, misrepresenting AI's work as your own is cheating), but this is nothing new: students were using various sites to cheat before large language models were a thing. Throughout the pandemic, students were gaming "remote" exam systems to cheat, too. Yes, I suppose the value of college degrees will diminish for colleges who generally allow students to graduate by cheating their way through, and no doubt some short-sighted colleges will succumb to the temptation to close their eyes to the cheating and just collect the tuition. I suppose I can accept that the value of those particular colleges' degrees will go to zero. But colleges that require students to actually learn will persist, they will address the cheating as they have addressed cheating before, and the value of such degrees will remain.
EOs not withstanding, as long as Griggs v Duke Power is on the books, employers will continue to use degrees as a sorting mechanism until it becomes too painful to do so. By painful, I mean some sort of spectacular collapse caused by an incompetent employee. My first thought was that it would be a government employer but government is impervious to this. Perhaps something in the physical world then. Planes falling from sky, bridges collapsing. All this has happened before but not at scale.