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For more than a century, American education has been transformed by technology.
Various technological shifts have created the modern “knowledge economy,” in which workers with the most years of formal schooling tend to be the best-paid. Economists refer to this dynamic as the race between education and technology, and it’s why each generation of Americans has remained in school longer than the last. Our current education system has been built around this reality.
Enter generative AI, which is not like the technologies that automated parts of farm or factory work, and might not be like the computer or the internet. Instead, AI threatens to upend a paradigm that has existed for generations, in which the economy adapts to new technologies by demanding more education. In theory, AI could do the opposite by replacing large swaths of white-collar workers. That’s why this moment feels so perilous for students and schools.
To be clear, no one really knows how AI will change the economy. But at this moment of uncertainty it’s worth looking back at the historical interplay between technology, the economy, and schooling. Understanding how technology has already transformed education can help understand how it might do so again and why the onset of the AI era feels so different.
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For the last century plus, technology in various forms has laid waste to certain farm, manufacturing, blue-collar, and other middle-income jobs. Instead, demand has grown for highly educated white-collar workers.
During this time, American schools and universities have raced to keep up with technology by expanding access. High school education opened up to most teenagers in the early 20th century. The growth of college education followed in later decades. During this time, the U.S. was far ahead of other countries in making schooling broadly accessible, which helped turn the country into an economic powerhouse.
“Because the American people were the most educated in the world, they were in the best position to invent, be entrepreneurial, and produce goods and services using advanced technologies,” wrote Harvard economists Claudia Goldin and Lawrence Katz, in their classic 2008 book “The Race Between Education and Technology.”
The pressure for a more educated workforce continued apace in the following decades. In the 1990s, President Bill Clinton liked to quip, “what you earn depends on what you learn.” This was a neat encapsulation of the new economic order.
In response, politicians of various stripes advanced policies aimed at preparing students for postsecondary education and knowledge-intensive work. Kindergarten classes reduced a focus on play and began emphasizing academic content. Schools were held accountable for test scores and graduation rates. High schools expanded college prep programs. Colleges began recruiting more students who wouldn’t have considered higher education previously.
Ironically, during this time, there was little indication that technology itself was dramatically improving teaching and learning. In fact, there’s been a cycle of hype followed by disappointment when the radio, the TV, various “teaching machines,” and the computer fail to revolutionize schooling for the better.
Meanwhile, the economy’s voracious appetite for highly educated workers was not fully sated. For the last half century, Americans’ years of education have increased, but at a slower pace than in prior decades. Meanwhile, the relative wages of college-educated workers rose steadily through the early 2000s. This college wage premium — the advantage those with a degree have over other workers — has stopped growing recently but remains at historically high levels.
This has left a modern economy that is fairly polarized. There are many jobs that only require a high school education — like home health aides, retail clerks, warehouse stockers — but their wages are relatively low. Most well-paid professions typically demand a college degree or more: nurses, doctors, lawyers, college professors, business managers, accountants, and engineers.
This economic and educational revolution of the last several decades has led to vastly increased productivity and has benefited well-credentialed workers and the educational institutions that provide those skills and degrees. But it has not been kind to less-educated Americans and has likely contributed to growing income inequality.
The existential question now is whether generative artificial intelligence will change this economic paradigm. AI can already produce research, writing, and analysis previously assumed to be only doable by well-educated workers. One recent study had both educated and less-educated people complete a workplace-like problem-solving exercise. Without AI, the highly educated group did much better. With AI, that edge shrunk substantially. That’s why some commentators prophesy a great “deskilling,” in which many well-paid white-collar workers get replaced by AI.
Education has value beyond its economic return. But if that return erodes, demand for the current offerings of American schooling, especially higher education, would likely decline — potentially leading to unprecedented disruption in an industry that has long assumed a growing customer base.
Yet this is hardly an inevitability. Maybe educated workers will be best able to avail themselves of AI. Or maybe the technology will wipe out some white-collar jobs, but expand and create others. Perhaps AI will mostly supplement rather than replace office work or it will prove less useful than some think.
While some claim that AI has already decimated the job prospects of young college graduates, the weight of the data does not support this narrative.
At this point, then, we simply don’t know how AI will reshape the economy and the jobs available to Americans. This leaves students and educators in the profoundly difficult position of preparing for an economic future that feels more uncertain than ever before.
Matt Barnum is Chalkbeat’s ideas editor. Reach him at mbarnum@chalkbeat.org.
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