How AI threatens to make traditional college degree obsolete

The golden standard of the bachelor’s degree is in peril as artificial intelligence rapidly advances and employers seek workers who are well-versed in that technology.

“AI’s going to make it virtually impossible for a one-off moment of learning [like a degree] to last an entire career,” LinkedIn CEO Ryan Roslansky said this week at the Talent Connect Summit, a conference of the country’s 2,000 top recruiters. As smart tech progresses, jobs will be expected to evolve, placing an emphasis on people skills rather than trade tasks that can be learned by a machine.

LinkedIn executives highlighted the “critical” need for up-skilling as AI technology develops, meaning that employee adaptability will be an expectation, rendering program-oriented four-year degrees virtually useless.

As a result of technological innovation in the past decade, whole industries have turned “upside down,” Indeed CEO Chris Hyams said last month as he also warned that college-learned skills could become “obsolete.”