Everyday AI Podcast – An AI and ChatGPT Podcast - EP 611: The Last Lectures: Why colleges still running from AI in 2025 will eventually die

Episode Date: September 16, 2025

If your kid's college is still banning AI.....they're not gonna make it ☠️↳ Not allowing students to use ChatGPT? It'll be a useless degree. ↳ Using 'AI detectors' to police LLMs? Better to transfer now. ↳ Haven't ripped up their 2022 curriculum yet? That university is on death watch. I've been holding this in for a bit. Time for some hot takes. 🔥The Last Lectures: Why colleges still running from AI in 2025 will eventually die -- An Everyday AI Chat with Jordan WilsonNewsletter: Sign up for our free daily newsletterMore on this Episode: Episode PageJoin the discussion on LinkedIn: Thoughts on this? Join the convo on today's LinkedIn stream and connect with other AI leadersUpcoming Episodes: Check out the upcoming Everyday AI Livestream lineupWebsite: YourEverydayAI.comEmail The Show: [e-mail] with Jordan on LinkedInTopics Covered in This Episode:Collapse of US Higher Education PredictedAI Skills Gap in College GraduatesCollege Blanket AI Bans and PoliciesEmployer Demand for Generative AI SkillsQuiet Hiring Trends and Entry-Level JobsPlummeting Value of College DegreesRising Cost of College TuitionAI Digital Divide in University OfferingsSuccess Stories: AI-Forward UniversitiesUniversities Failing with AI Content RestrictionsFuture Predictions for Universities and AITech Companies Acquiring Struggling CollegesShift to Subscription-Based Learning ModelsAI-Driven University Rankings and MetricsTimestamps:00:00 AI and Higher Education Concerns06:14 "AI's Impact on New Grad Jobs"09:22 University Closures and AI Policy Shift10:39 AI Usage Left to Instructors16:58 Grads Unprepared for AI Jobs20:58 "AI's Impact on Higher Education"24:25 College Costs Outpacing Inflation28:02 Universities Struggle with AI Detection30:20 Dartmouth's Confusing AI Policy33:10 AI Restrictions Outdated in Education?36:20 University Investment Disparity39:47 Universities Monetize Student Data42:24 AI Reshapes Education and Careers45:57 "AI's Impact on Higher Education"50:43 Ultimate AI Guide and ResourcesKeywords:AI in education, AI skills gap, colleges and universities, higher education collapse, university AISend Everyday AI and Jordan a text message. (We can't reply back unless you leave contact info) Start Here ▶️Not sure where to start when it comes to AI? Start with our Start Here Series. You can listen to the first drop -- Episode 691 -- or get free access to our Inner Cricle community and all episodes: StartHereSeries.com Also, here's a link to the entire series on a Spotify playlist. 

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There's studies that show all of these things. Studies that show recent grads say college degrees aren't worth it. Employers have stopped hiring. Colleges aren't properly teaching AI. Employers are demanding AI. skills and colleges are now historically unaffordable. So like I said, I'm not a math major, but the math on the future of colleges in university education, at least here in the U.S. ain't mathen. So that's why we're going to ramp it up today for Hot Take Tuesday on this

edition of Everyday AI and talk about the last lectures, why colleges still running from AI in 2025 will eventually die. Yeah, there's not going to exist. You know, I got the receipts. Let's get into it. I'm excited for today's show. I hope you are too. What's going on, y'all? Welcome to Everyday AI. My name's Jordan Wilson and Everyday AI. It's for you. It's your daily live stream podcast and free daily newsletter helping everyday business leaders like you and me, not just keep up with AI, but how we can use all this information, all these new happenings, all these new releases and studies to make sense of that. Get a lot. the head grow our companies and our careers.

If that's what you're trying to do, welcome. Your first home here on the live stream, unedited, unscripted podcast. But if you want to take it to the next level, our website, your everyday AI.com. There, make sure you go sign up for the free daily newsletter, where we recap each day's live stream podcasts, as well as keep you up to date with all the other AI news and happenings that are important. So if you're looking for that, make sure you go check out the newsletter. But let's talk about it.

colleges and universities here in the U.S. are going to die off. All right. Live dream audience is good to see you. Let me know how hot this hot take Tuesday should be. Do I need to be careful? I'm technically a professor of AI. So shout out to DePaul University, one of the largest private Catholic universities in the country,

where I've been teaching AI at. But how hot of this take should it be? I don't know. Here's a little secret, y'all. This is one of my hottest takes on AI that I've been telling my family and I've yet to share with you all because I feel so strongly in this.

But at the same time, I don't want to necessarily burn down the higher education system here in the U.S. I know that we have a lot of, you know, I get messages all the time. You know, deans from large colleges and universities, professors, educators are listening in and they're doing their best to, you know, try and do ethical and responsible AI in the classroom. And I understand the difficulties. But I also think that you have a bunch of old heads in universities that are thinking like dinosaurs with their

own self-serving interests, which is putting college students everywhere at risk of being unemployable. So I don't know where to land on this. Karina just said one one hot chili pepper. All right. Angie threw in a couple fire emojis. Michelle just said hot with some kind of monster emoji. All right.

We'll see. But live stream audience, I'd love to even hear from you and our podcast audience. Let me know in the comments. I think you can leave a comment on Spotify. I can't reply to those always, but let me know what your thoughts are. But here's what we're going to go over today's show. We're going to uncover the latest trends on college AI usage in employment. We're going to preview how the AI digital divide will eventually kill off.

Ready? Said you want to the hot takes. We'll eventually kill off more than 2,000 colleges. And I'm going to make some kind of crazy predictions on AI. AI in education. I don't know. Maybe I was tired last night. I was doubling down on preparation for the show.

Or maybe I was just getting a little bit creative, putting on my problem solving hat, because we know this is a problem. So what good is just talking about the problem if you don't offer some solutions? So at the end of the show, I'm going to offer some kind of wild predictions slash solutions. Also, repost this one, trust me. So sometimes I put together some additional guides. for our audience. And this one is a straight banger.

All right. Speaking of solutions, I put together literally this, every single university should go read this, this interactive website that I put together. So if you want access to it, it's ready to go now. So just repost this show on LinkedIn.

All right. So if you're listening on the podcast, I always put the link to the LinkedIn post of this live stream. So just repost this and I'll send it to you. But this essentially is what to do when AI kills off colleges and everyday AI guy. We go over the history of AI school bans, advocacy, and how to advocate for better AI in your schools, talking about some studies and trends in jobs and skills, investment, and also some of the best free AI courses out there.

It's an insanely valuable resource, FYI. Also, I did, I'm not going to go into this on every single angle, because I'm not going to go into this on every single angle because I did an episode a couple of months ago. So if you want to go listen to that, this is episode 562. How will new grads get a job with AI, what you need to know? So if you are interested in this, make sure to go listen to 562. So let's set this stage a little bit here. So as of the 20, 23, 2024 school year, this is the last year that there was data available.

There are more than 5,800 colleges, universities, and other post-secondary institutions in the US that are eligible eligible to participate in federal student aid programs. So there's a lot of, you know, unaccredited colleges and universities. But this is essentially one of the easiest things to track. So I'm going to be talking about, uh, this kind of 5,800 colleges in the US. It's technically more than just colleges. It's also universities, other post-secondary institutions, et cetera. But we're talking about 5,800.

All right. And this is a lot of schools in obviously, uh, the AI policy trends, are much different. You have, I think, universities that are doing it the right way and that I think are going to continue to succeed and thrive in the future decades to come. And then I think you have colleges and universities that are looking at the clock because their time is ticking. But let's first, if you don't know, let's do a quick catch up. Right. So obviously, the big date here is November 2020. That is when Chad Chup. TpT was released. and now the class that just started.

So, right, we are well into the fall semester for the class of 2025, 2025, 26. This is the first kind of class that has had chat GPT throughout freshman, sophomore, junior, and senior year. So you could say this is the chat GPT class. But let's talk a little bit about some of the shifting policy trends when it comes to AI across the board, across those 5,800 colleges and universities here in the U.S. So in early 2023, hardly any colleges, less than 10% in 2023, had a formal AI policy. And most of them were inconsistent.

And I covered that at the time. You know, some of my very first shows on the Everyday AI show two and a half years ago, were absolutely ripping apart these colleges and universities that were blanket banning. And in 2024, blanket banning became a thing. So institutions also did develop formal AI policies. About 24% of colleges had a formal AI policy, but also there was widespread student usage. So obviously students got ahead of it up to 92% of students reported using AI tools like ChatGPT in that school year. And about 20% of those 5800 colleges and universities.

So more than a thousand places of higher education, just straight up band AI. They said you can't use it no matter what. It's the devil, Bobby Boucher. You can't use it. And obviously today, that conversation has changed because actually the amount of school and university closures in 2024, obviously 2025 is not yet, doubled. Right. So every single year, there's obviously colleges and universities.

that essentially just go out of business because their enrollments down, you know, their graduation rates, their placement rates are down and they just can't make it. They're going bankrupt, right? Even though a lot of in the U.S., a lot of colleges and universities are technically non-profits and they are multi-billion dollar moneymaking machines, there's still plenty of colleges and universities that go out of business each and every year. But by 2025, the colleges and universities that are still around, obviously, The dominant trend in terms of AI policy has shifted to a more nuanced instructor-led policies.

So out of the institutions that have policies and a lot more stats are in that the free guide, right? So make sure you go share today's episode because a lot more stats in there. But more than 51% of university policies essentially around AI shift it to the instructor. right? So they don't even 51% don't have a university wide policy. Their policy is, well, it's the instructor, the instructor's job to dictate AI usage, how you can use it, if you can use it, or are the penalties if you do use it. Think of that. More than half. More than half. Their policy is like, ah, just let individual professors figure it out. This is one of the reasons why when I talk to recent college grads,

and I assume, oh yeah, you got to be learning about AI. It is the year 2025. And many of them know nothing because they're like, oh, yeah, you know, I learned this. You know, one of my professors taught me this. And, you know, the rest of our classes, you know, just kind of the Wild West. You know, it's free for all. It is wildly, even in 2025, even though blanket, bands are essentially gone, less than seven, about seven percent, most studies say only about

seven percent of colleges have essentially, you can't use AI, which those seven percent are going to be the first to go. Let's be honest. Most just shift the enormous, the enormous responsibility straight to professors. So let's dig into some harsh realities of what this has led to, right the higher education system in the u.s is currently built on quicks end it is going to collapse we are going to see right i'm sure most of our uh most of our listeners here are old enough to remember the financial collapse of uh 2028 2029 or sorry uh not the future 2008 2008 2009 right the mortgage industry the banking industry needed a bailout we are going to see that but way worse for colleges and universities it is going to be of proportions that we've never seen

and one of the reasons colleges aren't worth it anymore a university degree isn't worth it So the academic research group, Sengage, extremely reputable group, one of the biggest in the field. They just came out with a report this month, actually just about a week ago, talking about the employability gap between higher education in the U.S. and employers who are actually hiring for these jobs. And they found that right now, the latest stats say that, Only 30% of graduates in 2025 have a job in their field of study. Whereas the year before, that was 41%. Only 30% less than a third of students can't get a job in their field of study.

And you know I got receipts longer than an entire line of Lollapaloozers prehydrating before Lollapalooza, going to CVS, buying everything. I got receipts longer than that. You know I do. So right now, the same study shows that three quarters of employers are either hiring the same or fewer entry level workers, right? Normally companies grow. They hire more college grads, not anymore.

And that stat is growing. The previous year, it was 69%. Now it's 76%. So what happens when, I don't know, 90% of it. employers are hiring fewer people. It's what I call quiet hiring. This is how we are going to see in the next five to 10 years unemployment go up because of AI, but not necessarily like we're not going to see across the board thousands of jobs being

cut, right? If you all remember the quiet quitting epidemic during the pandemic, right? We're tired and undercompensated workers essentially just quiet quit. And they're like, well, I'm going to do the minimum to get by and essentially quit. Right. Employers are now quiet hiring. We're normally if they're hiring, you know, 100 employees every single year, they're like, well, hey, this AI thing's actually working out. Those companies that are properly implementing AI, they're like, well, it's actually working.

We don't need to hire 100 people. It's hired 20. Right. That way we don't have to fire a bunch of people. We'll just stop hiring. And the data is showing more than three-fourths of employers are hiring the same or fewer entry-level workers. Another study, very recent one, May 2025 from Gusto, the payroll processing company, so they have a lot of data. This isn't one of those flimsy MIT studies that, a vibe study where they just have phone conversations with 52 people.

and then go viral on the internet. And they say, oh, 95% of AI pilots are failing. Trust me, I talked to 52 friends. All right. So this study published by Gusto said that entry level hiring in 2025 was forecast to be 44% lower than the peak experience just three years previously. 44% dropped in three years is astronomical. All right.

And again, most companies, companies have barely implemented AI properly. Let's look at this same stat in three years. I'm guessing in three years, it's going to be 90%. I'm guessing by the end of the decade, it's going to be a 2x to 3x decrease in hiring entry level jobs. Here's another harsh reality. College grads don't have the AI skills.

They don't. So a 2020. 24, graduate employability report found that nearly two-thirds of employers, or 62%, believe that candidates should have a foundational knowledge of generative AI tools. However, more than half, 55% of graduates in that same survey said that their degree programs did not prepare them to use any of the tools, with 61% of Gen Z graduates feeling unprepared for the AI world. And over half of recent graduates reported second guessing.

their career choice due to the rapid change from AI, an increase of 33% the year prior. Talk about feeling unprepared in age of AI. To go from 33% to 51% in a wide scale study is an enormous jump. So let's look at the realities again. Colleges aren't worth it. Employers aren't hiring. College grads don't have the AI skills, but employers, want them. So in Indeed, hiring lab report found that the share of U.S. job postings

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See it today at firefly.adobie.com. Why? Because the university degree? Ain't what it used to be, y'all. It's not. So a recent Gallup poll conducted this August found that only 35% of Americans now rate a college education as very important. Where previously, 15 years ago, that was 75%.

Let me say that again. In 2010, 75% of Americans said that a college education was very important. Now, 35%. And I can guarantee this Gallup pull in five years, in 2030, it's going to be 10%. Which I know sounds weird, right? I know a lot of our audience is, you know, millennials, baby boomers, right? The majority of our audience is 30 to 55. All right?

When we think of college education, we think. think of it as the backbone of the the economic society, right? You can't even envision a scenario where a college degree, it's like, you know, back back when I graduated college, you know, almost, oh, I don't want to, should I age myself here? Not quite 20 years ago, but almost 20 years ago, right? When I would just meet random people, friends of friends, right? The assumption that everyone had a college degree. Right? It's like, well, you. You can't really make a career for yourself a thriving one for the most part without a college degree. I'm not saying, right?

I'm not saying that in a bad way. I know a lot of people don't have college degrees, but I think that was the conversation, right? In the 90s, in the early 2000s, it was just like, hey, if you want to make it, you go to college, you get a degree. It's not like that anymore. 35%. And I can guarantee you, because of all these factors. that we added up. We are going toward a higher education collapse. It is going to be apocalyptic. College degree in 10 to 20 years, people are going to look at you and be like, why? That's the reality.

Yes, there's still some instances where, you know, probably for legal and medical, even though I think AI is going to be extremely disruptive in those areas, there's still going to be certain areas where it's like, oh, yeah, that makes sense that you would get a degree, a four-year-old degree, but for the most part, I think in 10 to 20 years, people are going to look at you and be like, college? Really? Because AI is fundamentally changing how humans should learn and consume information. Because regardless of what stat you look at, who you follow online, the world's most capable

large language models are way smarter and more capable than any one average human. So higher education system was essentially set up to have us memorize facts and memorize stats and to put ourselves in scenarios where we had to logically make decisions based on facts and stats. That's what large language models do, much better than any human. So even the core concepts of what you would learn in college isn't even needed anymore. Well, all the stats are starting to say absolutely not. More, more stats. A university degree is becoming less important. So this is based on a November 2023 survey.

Unfortunately, I couldn't find a more up to date. So imagine if once this study gets updated, how much more skewed this is going to be, ready? But this is employers, 55% of employers eliminated. bachelor degree requirements in 2023 for at least some of their roles. But look at that for entry level. That is 70%. 70% in back in 2023. After one year of Chad GPT, right?

70% of employers eliminated some degree requirements within their companies. 20 years ago to get a job. You had to have a college degree. Today, those requirements are disappearing. These are facts. These are stats. These are not just my random hunches.

And there's a lot of these facts and stats. The other harsh reality, there's a lot of them. College is straight up unaffordable. All right. Our live stream audience can see a chart I have on my screen here. But looking at college tuition costs over the last 25 years, public four-year universities and private four-year universities. universities. Well, it has more than tripled. All right. Public four-year institutions,

the average cost of tuition in 2000 was $3,500. Today, 11,600. More than tripled in 20 years. Yes, I understand. You know, people are going to be like, oh, Jordan, do you not understand Cola? Do you not understand? Just prices go up? Yeah. I understand. But the cost of college has far surpassed anything else. Look it up. Housing markets, cars, the cost of milk, right? If you look at, yes, there's some anomalies to that rule, but for the most part,

the majority of what people spend their money on rent, mortgages, cars, etc. Even though those have all gone up in the past 25 years, none of them, on average, have gone up more than 3x, only college. Sorry if you don't like facts and stats. So, let's do that math again. Ready? What's going to be the outcome? To quote the great DMX,

let's add up all the factors. Fewer recent college grads are getting jobs in their fields. Companies are hiring fewer roles. Employers are finding recent grads don't have basic AI skills that they desire. Yeah, the math ain't mathing, at least for a fruitful future for higher education in the U.S. Quiet hiring is going to be economically crushing. There are going to be fewer and fewer new jobs available to recent grads.

And the value of a college degree is going to begin in fewer new jobs available to recent grads. And the value of a college degree is going to begin and continue to plummet. So let's look at the current day situation at some U.S. universities. Because there are those that are doing it right. Like I said, I'm not throwing every single college and university under the bus. Some are making impressive moves. Let's talk about some of those.

Ohio State University, right? If you've been following our newsletter, we've talked about literally all of these four different examples on my screen right now. Ohio State University, they just released some big announcements on their investment in AI. So they have AI skills, seminars, and Gen. AI basics are required for all 65,000 students starting in 2025. You have to actually take an AI proficiency, some sort of AI proficiency test to get a degree starting this year. Or it might start with this year's class.

not sure on that. I don't think all the information has come out. All right, let's look at the California State University. They have a $17 million deal that provides chat GBT to all 500,000 students and faculty across California state universities, right? So all the different public schools in California. Arizona State University, one of the first colleges to go all in on AI. So they have over 200,000 students cover. by 500 plus OpenAI enabled Gen AI projects. And then a more recent one, Indiana University, not too far from my hometown of Chicago in Bloomington,

just gave access 120,000 students, faculty, and staff have just received chat GBTEDU access. These are companies, or sorry, these are universities doing it the right way. They understand employers need these skills. So we are giving them to our students. They're actually doing a lot more than what I just have on my bullet points there. And then there's those that are failing. All right.

So we talked about some that are doing it right and a lot are just failing. Let's look at a couple. Ready? Liberty University. This Liberty still prohibits students from producing AI generated content. And only limited help for grammar or brainstorming is allowed and they use Turn It in AI Detects. y'all if your university is still using AI content detectors what do the kids say n gm i not going to make it your your university is first on the chopping box if someone a decision maker at your school

that is supposed to be an educational university got swindled into thinking AI detection actually works you're done because you're going to have so many lawsuits on your hands from students that were unfairly, you know, kicked out of school, you know, put on academic probation because of false positives. If your university is still using AI content detectors, yeah, you're going to be first on the chopping block. I don't give you long. All right.

Brown University, they have a total ban on AI for admissions essays and a strict academic integrity policy for coursework. The University of Chicago law school here in my hometown of Chicago, absolutely prohibits generative AI use and exams and treats AI use as plagiarism. The University of Missouri treats unauthorized AI use as an academic integrity violation. Princeton University, if an instructor permits AI for specific tasks, example brainstorming, students must disclose its use, copying an AI output or exceeding permitted use violates academic integrity.

Columbia University, unless a course instructor clearly grants permission using generative AI for assignments or exams is prohibited. Unauthored use is treated as cheating or plagiarism. Oh my gosh. Duke University. Had to throw Duke on there. I will put my bias on my sleeve. I'm a big North Carolina fan.

So. But under the Duke community standard, unauthorized use of generative AI is treated as cheating and instructors set course specific rules and to others. Dartmouth College. AI tools are disallowed by default unless explicitly permitted by instructors and the University of Norderdame. So very confusing AI policy because now they're saying, oh, we encourage the AI AI use, right? But then they say at the same time, you have to play by our AI guidelines and their AI guidelines are essentially like, don't use AI. All right. So this is verbatim what they say.

Representing work you did not produce, including AI generated or materially AI modified. work is academic dishonesty using generative AI contrary to an instructor's policy or not expressly permitted by the faculty member violates the honor. What are you all doing? Do you want to fade into irrelevance? Do you want to be on that list of schools in 2025 that's going to double from 2024 that statistically doubled from 2023 the number of colleges and universities shutting down? right we thought we thought things were too big to fail the mortgage industry too big to fail banks too big to fail department stores right too big to fail universities too big to fail too important fail too historic to fail too much legacy to fail wrong nope the math ain't mathin and this is creating

what I call a huge digital divide. Because you have such polar opposites now where I think even in 2023 and 2024, it was just a lot of gray area in the middle. So many colleges and universities in the U.S. We're just good with that gray area. Let's just have professors decide. Let's have a hard to interpret an ambiguous AI statement. Let's throw some buzzwords.

on there, but ultimately, you know, let's still use AI content detectors and, you know, put it in the instructor's hands. It's not like that anymore. There are still colleges and universities that are extremely prohibitive and extremely restrictive. And then there's colleges and universities that are operating more like startups. And they're putting the latest AI technology into the hands of thousands of students, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of students. So we talk about those fewer and fewer jobs that are available now to college graduates. Why would anyone, why would anyone attend any of those schools that still have any sort of restrictions on AI?

I understand the arguments, oh, well, Jordan, you know, if you ban AI, it forces the students to use their brains. Okay. Guess what? Every single company out there is using generative AI, is using large language models. We are rewriting in real time how humans think, the value of knowledge, right? We used to be paid and historically rewarded for decades over what we knew, a subject matter expert, someone that climbs the company ladder in the two, you know, in the 90s, the 80s, the early 2000s, it was based on what

they knew and how they could create new business value based on what they know. Fast forward to let's say 2025 and beyond. It doesn't matter what you know. It matters the new business value that you can create with generative AI around your company's data. It doesn't matter if you sit down someone like you would in a test in one of these. universities now that restrict AI use. Be like, all right, hey, can't use your book on this project here.

Bill, head of marketing. Nah, Bill, head of marketing at a billion dollar company. Can't use AI. You got to use your brain. You're using pencil this year, Bill. That's assonite. So why do colleges and universities? Why are they still operating?

as if that is the real world. The only thing bigger maybe than this gap between the AI haves and the AI has-nots is the absolute separation from reality that these dinosaur institutions have from the real world. I want to talk to that old, you know, 75-year-old man at some of these universities that thinks it's smart to ban AI. Do you know why they're uneducated? That person is extremely uneducative. I don't care how many degrees they have.

If you are still banning AI at a college or university, that means you are not smart. You are literally signing up your students, your graduates to fail, and you are blindly robbing them in the process. Here you go, students.

Let me kick you out to the sharks that are hungry and you are the food because you are not prepared. You are not going to get a job. So that puts graduates it's in a dilemma. Fewer, fewer grads are getting jobs. Employers, fine grads lack AI skills and companies are hiring for fewer AI roles. The math is not looking good unless you are attending a university that is pushing AI. And the divide is too wide to stand for too long. So let's just take an example,

right? Out of those halves and have knots, let's look at Ohio State and Missouri, Missouri. Missouri, zoo, right? Similar-ish, right? Midwestern universities, been around for a while, you know, reputable reputations in 10 years. I think it's going to be hard to measure. If those, if those universities stay course, right? We talk about Ohio State, all they're investing in AI, yet Missouri extremely restrictive. If those institutions stay, stay on that course, you are not even going to be able to compute and calculate how much more valuable a degree from Ohio State University is than Mizzou. Mizzou's job placement pipeline will shrink.

They're not going to be able to attract new students because all of these stats that I already laid out for you, these are compounding. They're going to get worse and worse and worse. And the divide is only going to grow greater and greater. It's like an unfair advantage, right? If you think of college sports, I follow college sports. So now in university athletics, we have something called NIL, name image, lightens.

Essentially, college students are no longer college students. They're pro athletes, right? So everyone gets paid to play sports in college. Imagine half of the universities, even in the same conference, half said, nah, we're not going to do it. And the other half, we're like, yeah, we're going to double down on this. Imagine how unfair that would be. Yet, here we are. When it comes to academics, when it comes to preparing students for the real world,

which should be a colleges or a university's number one priority, not their own self-interest. We have the opposite. This divide is too wide. And it is going to cause colleges and universities to crumble. Let's get this thing wrapped up. Let's look into the future here, shall we? these might be some crazy predictions. But I think this is where we're headed.

Okay. University, all right, I have three or four kind of hot take predictions. And though they may not come 100% right, I think you have to, I want to be a little provocative here to get people to think about what the future of education may look like with AI. Like I said, I've talked to more people in universities than the average person, right? I talk about AI every day. I'm constantly emailing, DMing, having conversations, interviewing people around AI and education. So I'll say, even though these might seem like hot takes, this is where the industry is headed. I think university donations

will be replaced by access to university IP. I think smart universities are going to realize they're sitting on a freaking gold mind of structured and unstructured data. We talk about, you know, all these things like AI scaling laws and good data, right? Universities number one, they're dumb. Sorry. Universities are one of the biggest sources of untapped structured and unstructured data in the world. And this is what all the big tech companies are paying unlimited amounts for. So I think ultimately the smart universities are going to start capturing all of this data that

they've had and that they're sitting on and they're going to come up with better systems. to collect this data. I think ultimately this drives the price of tuition down because essentially students, you know, they're like, hey, all of our conversation, you know, all of our classroom conversations are going to be recorded. And it's being turned into data for large,

you know, large language models. And those large language models are going to be either rented out by big companies, by the AI labs, or access to them for donors. Yeah. It's going to happen.

university rankings, they're going to get shaken up. All right. They're going to be influenced by the amount of compute and access to frontier AI. Like I said, job placement rates across the board are going to go down because there's fewer jobs. Okay. And there's going to be a big divide among the AI haves and the AI have knots. So one kind of new ranking factor you're going to see, it's like the AI labs, especially with my first kind of hot take prediction on essentially universities are going to be a hub

for high quality human first data, right? Imagine hundreds or thousands of doctoral students talking about their field, the changes in their fields and turning that into data for large language models. But I think that's also going to influence rankings, right? We always talk about college rankings, right, a top 20 university on this, you know, a top 10 Midwestern business school. It's going to be now in the future dictated on access to AI and compute. In the same way that tech companies, I think a lot of these things are going to trickle down to universities. I think universities are going to become essentially hubs for tech companies.

And I would not be surprised. And I don't even think this made my hot take list, but also tech companies are going to acquire universities. I know that sounds crazy, but universities will literally, many of them, hundreds and potentially multiple thousands of them in 10, 15 years are not going to financially be able to sustain themselves. They're going to get acquired or they're going to get minority investments from big tech companies. I'm talking Google, Microsoft, Meta, Open AI, etc. But university rankings are going to be kind of like not saying university is going to turn into like, you know, minor leagues for big tech companies. But it's going to be rankings are going to be impacted by the amount and access to compute and frontier AI. Also, four year degrees are going to be either replaced or supplemented by learning subscriptions for alumni.

the half-life and value of traditional knowledge building is going to continue to decrease, right? What you know still kind of matters now. In five to ten years, right, when we're talking more about AGI, artificial general intelligence and artificial superintelligence, what you know doesn't matter. It really doesn't, right? It's starting, and I think it's a hard reality for a lot of people to swallow in the new, you know, future of work, AI everywhere, and AI,

Native organizations. An AI native organization, what you know doesn't really matter. How you work with AI that knows everything matters much more. But I think smart universities are going to figure this out. The half life of the value of a degree, right? It's going to go down to essentially nothing. I think what we're going to see is learning subscriptions for current students and alumni, where you pay a yearly subscription.

Think some of these alumni networks. are, if you looked at them like a business, they'd be some of the most powerful businesses in the world. I think what's going to happen is as universities start to collect their own data and turn that into IP and turn that into, right, I think, fine-tuned large language models. You know, number one, people are going to pay for access to those, but there's also going to be some ongoing education in learning around AI.

Think of even just how different large language models are today than they were two years ago, right? They're all now internet connected. It's very easy to, you know, essentially have some sort of retrieval augmented generation with one click, right, connecting your company's data to these large language models. They can think, they can reason. The scaffolding, the agentic capabilities is insane. It changes so quickly. So I think that, you know, alumni or even students, right, there's going to be options instead of paying that $13,000 for,

you know, a degree from a place, you're going to pay a membership. I don't know. Maybe it's going to be $1,000 a year and you get essentially access to, you know, online learning modules, you know, probably some sort of live instruction. And you get some equivalent of what a degree would be, right? So you still get something to show for it. But I think it's going to be like, you know, chat, Chb-T has their new, you know, it's rolling out, but they're, new certification, right? It's going to be, it's going to live within chat GBT. And essentially, you can become chat GBT certified by answering questions and interacting

with chat GBT inside of chat chbt. And then the whole world knows your chat chbt certified. I think it's got to be like that for the smart AI universities. They're going to have some sort of program. It's not, it's a little different from a four year degree, but they're going to have different varieties. I'm guessing dozens or hundreds of these type of certifications that just live within there. version of a large language model.

So that whatever Open AI is kind of building this, you know, uh, certification process that lives inside of a large language model, come like smart universities that are diving into AI and that they're treating their structured and unstructured, uh, data like the gold mine it is. They're going to monetize it in this way. And that is going to further devalue the, the, the concepts of a traditional four year degree. All right. And I'm going to end with this.

And this is the one I've been telling my family for a very long time. And I've almost been too shy to share with people. But I think more than 2,000 of the current 5,800 colleges, universities, et cetera, will be gone in 10 years or they're essentially going to be acquired and go under this kind of conglomerate of big tech companies, right? So you think right now, you know, some of these state schools, right, they have nine satellite schools, right? I literally think you're going to have Google, META, Microsoft, acquiring these universities that are essentially going out of business, right? It's doubled over the past year.

The number of colleges and universities that have shut down because enrollment was slumping and they were operating and have been operating for a long time in the red. Colleges and universities, many of them are losing money. big tech companies have unlimited money to spend and they need access to clean human-led data. There's no way this doesn't happen. There's no way this doesn't happen. And I think it is going to be a much larger number than you would think. I think it's going to be about a third in 10 years.

Are no are either going to be gone or they're going to be under the minority or majority control of a private company or a publicly traded company. Because, again, you've got to math the math, y'all. When the price of education goes up, the value of a degree goes down, the demand for college degrees and the workplace goes down, AI commoditizing traditional knowledge building. It's inevitable. If you can take your own personal feelings, right,

I know we're all very proud of our, you know, college degrees. I have two of them. I could care less. They're pieces of paper. I didn't even pick up because I know today they don't matter. And in five years, they're going to matter less. And in 10 years, they're going to matter even less. So I think we have a personal attachment to the concept of higher education because,

you know, we put our blood, sweat and tears, you know, we earn that degree. Okay, cool. It's not going to matter. And that is inevitable. This is a hot take Tuesday. And I'm going to say this. This is one of those. I'm going to say, I'm only wrong on this one.

until I'm right, because it is absolutely inevitable. All right. Y'all wanted the hot takes. Did I go a little overboard? Maybe. Do I feel extremely confident with the thousands of hours that I've spent reading about AI, researching trends, talking to the smartest people in the world of AI, if you're listening to this now, I don't want you to think I'm some crazy guy, right?

Like, ah, listen to this lunatic. No, this is happening. Maybe not all my crazy predictions are going to come 100% true. But this is the general direction that things are heading. And we are going to see our last lectures at many universities. And colleges that today are still running from AI are going to eventually die or completely change or get acquired by a big tech company. You heard it here first. Don't say I didn't warn you.

Get prepared now. So if you have kids in high school, kids in college, if you work in education, you need to open up your eyes to the writing on the wall, the realities, the stats, facts, facts, and trends. Generative AI, large language model, AI development is not slowing down. Guess what is? Higher education in the U.S. Sorry, not sorry. was helpful. If it was, make sure you please repost this show. Like I said, I think I put together one of the best additional bonus guides I've ever put together. This is actually like, okay, now what do you do about it? All right. I built an entire mini site. Like I said, I think this is one of and I've looked at all of them. I think this is literally one of the best guides are in the top 1% guides on how to deal with AI. Right. So tackling it. from many different angles from an educational perspective.

So you can learn more about these school bans and there's directions and nudges and helpful hints on advocacy. So if someone's banning AI at a school, talking about different jobs and skills, investment, and also free courses, a complete checklist. It's actually an amazing resource. All you got to do is find the LinkedIn live stream of this podcast. So if you're listening on the podcast, make sure to check out the show notes. Always leave it in there.

Click repost, and I will send this to you as soon as I can. All right, thank you for tuning in. If you haven't already, please go to your EverydayaI.com. Sign up for the free daily newsletter. Thank you for this hot take Tuesday. Hope to see you tomorrow and every day for more Everyday AI. Thanks y'all. Meet Firefly AI Assistant.

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