Making students “future ready” is the wrong promise
“I’m at a point where I’m thinking if I can’t get a job being a data scientist, I might as well pursue art. Because if I’m going to be unemployed, I might as well do something I love.”
My word 😂
If that is your attitude to AI (and art!), your greatest enemy is yourself.
Universities all over the UK are promising prospective students AI skills that make them “future-ready.”
But that’s not the problem that needs solving.
The real problem is upstream.
It’s that a meaningful percentage of young people are internalising headlines that entry positions are under threat, and writing off their futures.
To be clear, I’m not saying AI isn’t having an impact.
But here’s another reality:
The gap between what AI can do and how it is being used to create value in the workplace is GIGANTIC.
According to Anthropic’s Labour Market Impact report, Claude currently covers just 33% of all tasks in the Computer & Math category.
For Business & Finance, Social Sciences and Management, it’s even less.
If your institution, whether it’s in class or on the recruitment round, teaches young people how to create value with AI - new processes, new IP, new ways of seeing the world - the potential upside for you is enormous.
It’s deeper than AI skills.
It’s teaching students how to think differently about this technology and what it can unlock.
Achieve that, and your competitors won’t know what happened.
