Will College Soon Be Obsolete?

Graduation week brings thousands of families to Berkeley, filling crosswalks and roads around campus with parents and students celebrating the end of the school year. A parent driving a nine-year-old to soccer practice gets stuck in the congestion and explains graduation as a transition into adulthood. The child challenges the idea that adulthood begins only at graduation, and the crowded conditions lead her to call graduation stupid. The parent also considers whether children her age will attend college, given artificial intelligence advances, anti-establishment populism, and demographic shifts. The focus includes possible student outcomes, an AI-altered future of higher education, and an enrollment cliff affecting colleges, alongside guidance on whether to keep funding 529 plans or redirect savings.

"This series of columns, to date, includes a survey of the most probable outcomes for students, a speculative but entertaining account of what the A.I.-altered future of higher education might look like, and a deeper study of the "enrollment cliff" facing colleges across the country. Hopefully, the series will give you some guidance on whether you should keep shoving money in those 529s or maybe save up for something else entirely."

Read at The New Yorker