The New Yorker recently asked the question many parents whisper at the dinner table: will AI make college obsolete? The piece traced the disruptive effects of generative tools on writing, problem-solving, and the credentialing economy that has anchored higher education since World War II.
Reading it, I came away convinced of the opposite. A.I. will not make college obsolete. A.I. will make the right kind of college experience more valuable, and the wrong kind much less defensible.
Why AI Will Not Make College Obsolete
We are watching the question play out in real time at Novella Prep. Our students arrive with ChatGPT, Claude, and a half-dozen study tools already integrated into their academic lives.
The students who outsource thinking to those tools are quietly falling behind, often without realizing it. The differentiator is not technology fluency; the differentiator is metacognition.
The Real Difference-Maker Is Metacognition
That diagnosis is consistent with the research base. Selwyn (2019) cautioned that artificial intelligence in education tends to amplify existing strengths and weaknesses rather than equalize them.
Holmes, Bialik, and Fadel (2019) reviewed dozens of educational A.I. deployments and reached a similar conclusion: tools work best when learners already have the executive functioning needed to plan, monitor, and revise.
A student who cannot organize a five-paragraph argument without help will not magically organize a fifty-page thesis with help. The scaffolding has to be inside the student first.
What College Still Teaches Better Than AI
College, when done well, is where that internal scaffolding gets built.
Pascarella and Terenzini (2005) synthesized three decades of research showing that the durable gains from higher education are not factual recall but capacities such as critical reasoning, perspective-taking, and ethical judgment.
Those capacities require sustained mentorship, peer friction, and the practice of producing original work under accountability. Generative tools can shortcut the production but not the learning.
A student who hands in a polished essay they did not understand has a transcript, not an education.
Is College Still Worth It in the Age of AI?
What does this mean for families weighing the cost of college? First, evaluate institutions on the depth of human relationships they offer, not the brand on the sweatshirt.
Faculty mentorship, small seminars, undergraduate research, and substantive office hours are now the moats. Schools that doubled down on lecture halls and adjunct instructors during the last decade may struggle to justify their tuition in an A.I.-saturated market.
How Families Should Evaluate Colleges in an AI-Saturated World
Second, choose programs that integrate A.I. literacy into the curriculum.
Bearman, Ryan, and Ajjawi (2023) noted that students entering the workforce will be expected to direct, audit, and improve A.I. systems, and the universities preparing them explicitly will hold an advantage.
Third, treat the major as a vehicle for skill formation rather than a brand.
Carnevale, Cheah, and Hanson (2022) reported that lifetime earnings now vary as much within majors as across them, making engagement and skill quality more determinative than the diploma.
Why Executive Functioning Matters More Than Ever
Executive functioning is the through-line. A.I. magnifies the value of students who can plan an essay, audit a draft, and notice when the model is confidently wrong.
The skill of recognizing a hallucinated citation is the modern equivalent of recognizing a flawed argument in a print source.
Novella Prep coaches teach that audit skill alongside writing, research, and study management. Students who learn to interrogate A.I. output instead of accepting it become rarer and more valuable graduates.
Is a College Degree Still Worth the Price?
Parents sometimes ask whether college is still worth the price tag. The honest answer is conditional.
Carnevale et al. (2022) found that the median bachelor’s degree still produces a substantial lifetime earnings premium, but variance has widened.
The premium increasingly tracks specific institutional features and student behaviors, not the diploma itself. Picking the right college, picking the right major within it, and engaging deeply once enrolled now matter more than they did a generation ago.
The Future of Higher Education Depends on Human Skills
I will not predict the future of higher education with confidence; few people should.
I will predict that the skills colleges have always claimed to teach — clear thinking, durable curiosity, and ethical judgment — are about to become more valuable, not less.
Families who choose institutions and programs that take those skills seriously will see their tuition deliver. Families who chase brand alone may find themselves paying for a credential the market is starting to discount.
Final Takeaway: AI Will Expose the Value of College
The New Yorker asked an honest question. The honest answer is that A.I. will not erase college; A.I. will expose it.
References
Bearman, M., Ryan, J., & Ajjawi, R. (2023). Discourses of artificial intelligence in higher education: A critical literature review. Higher Education, 86(2), 369–385.
Carnevale, A. P., Cheah, B., & Hanson, A. R. (2022). The economic value of college majors. Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce.
Holmes, W., Bialik, M., & Fadel, C. (2019). Artificial intelligence in education: Promises and implications for teaching and learning. Center for Curriculum Redesign.
Pascarella, E. T., & Terenzini, P. T. (2005). How college affects students: A third decade of research Vol. 2. Jossey-Bass.
Selwyn, N. (2019). Should robots replace teachers? AI and the future of education. Polity Press.