AI has basically revealed modern college education for the careerist farce it is, in particular the humanities, where cheating is especially prevalent and hard to prevent. It’s not even an open secret anymore that the only thing that matters is the credential, not the learning.
A solution, albeit a long shot, is to make it illegal for businesses to require degrees in the hiring process unless it can be demonstrated that a degree is necessary to perform the job, such as obviously medical school. Good luck though, given that educational status is not a protected class.
A common argument is that IQ testing is the solution, and that disparate impact is the problem. Maybe. However, IQ testing is already used: It’s called the Wonderlic. According to Reddit, the test is common and widely used, with many users reporting taking the test when applying for a job. Wonderlic scores map closely to full-scale IQ scores. The test is cheap and convenient, taking only 12 minutes and not requiring a psychologist on-site to proctor and score it.
Thousands of companies use the Wonderlic, and successful legal challenges against the test are far and few between. This is despite many grumblings online by applicants who felt qualified for the jobs they were applying to, but scored poorly and were ‘ghosted’. Or the fact that the NFL has used the test for decades without having been sued despite blacks consistently scoring lower than other groups.
But consider that 60+ years ago, IQ testing and credentialism were both uncommon or unheard of for hiring. So what did employers do? They had to actually consider everyone who applied, instead of automating/filtering most of it. Of course, given all the spam made worse by AI now, automated filtering is necessary, but it has gotten out of control in recent years, especially post-Covid.
And second, on-site job training. The expectation was companies would actually train employees for relevant skills instead of having colleges do it, so teaching journalism instead of needing a journalism degree.
This is not to say the humanities are worthless or entirely unappreciated. There are a small percentage of college students who care about them, and don’t see it as a required stepping stone to a diploma and career. But the era of forcing everyone to care is clearly not workable, as the epidemic of cheating shows, clearly they don’t care and cannot be forced to care. They know, correctly, they are going through the motions.
Even if the humanities survive, AI calls into doubt and renews debate to what it’s any good for anyway. Why are millions of young people who are in their peak productive years being forced through this unnecessary routine?