Latest / Black Box Theory Podcast / Is a College Degree Still Worth It in the AI Age?
Transcript
- Malcolm: Before This AI boom, a college degree almost certainly guaranteed a a a secure, high paying. Maybe not let me say not say high paying, but it it it secured some type of employment, right? And employ it it it gave you a sense of security, it gave you a career to look forward to. that's not the case anymore. And that's not just engineering, that's everywhere, right? Like, like nothing is guaranteed anymore. and we can say that's AI, we can say that's just the the hiring trends and shifts that companies have now. but what we can say is that a college degree does not mean what it once did, you know, five, ten years ago, where it was a pretty much a guarantee to walk out with a degree, you you have a job, you have an interview lined up. that's one thing. The other thing is that you're seeing like I said, more people going to the trade route because you said earlier, you know, you know, healthcare and hospitality, like that's always gonna be around. Like so there are certain things that people are starting to realize that things like plumbing, electrician, carpentry, you know, people getting CDOs and trucking business people doing like starting their own businesses. And they're also an enormous a ton of people starting their own like like startups now, right? Like like people are taking advantage of this inflection point because people are realizing that this is like maybe the only time they'll have to make that pivot and make that shift from being an employee to an owner to creating an ecosystem to creating a company that can solve the hardest problems in the world and a lot of them that are being created because of AI. Like, as even though AI has created a ton of, I guess, demand for new things, it's also created a a ton of like constraints and things that we have to worry about now. A t a ton of new problems, right? Like with all these data centers and we talk about this a little bit later, but more AI means less power. That means more water being consumed. That means more pollution for, you know, that means that means, you know, there are communities out there that are getting disproportionately affected from data power data center power usage and and pollution and and how it impacts kind of like the power grids of of people that live in a community. So it's it's also establishing all these new problems that people are now creating startups to go out and solve. They're people that are Making startups to solve the GPU and and CPU AI infrastructure problem. There are people creating startups to go solve the power problem. There are people creating startups to go solve like all of these kind of like problems that have come up as a result of AI being what it was. And so I think now, like we're seeing, like I said, that kind of like split and fork in the road between people that are making that executive decision to go the trade route and people that are going, you know, trying to understand like within AI. How do they develop those AI skill premiums and and those in-demand skills that Wall Street and that companies and that hiring managers looking for? And then you know, like like like like what does that kind of mean for early career professionals that are navigating the job market who, you know, didn't expect to have to basically get pick up another degree to make themselves qualified for the job that they thought just the degree would. now there's all these extra preferred qualifications and things that you need to have done. project experience and AI experience and AI literacy and AI fluency. So it's a it's definitely tough. I think for our younger folks, but I think it's yeah, I think it kinda comes down to having to essentially rebrand yourself almost, to become like to fit that description of like that that that AI, you know, that versatile AI kind of like employee bill, which s you know, it's easier said than done because AI is not just one thing. It's not just knowing how to type into Chat GPT getting output. Like it's it's everything. So it's tough right now for sure.