Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Entry-Level Work: A Framework for Safeguarding and Reinventing Early Career Pathways — from the World Economic Forum (weforum.org) and PwC
Artificial intelligence (AI) is reshaping how organizations hire, develop and advance talent, and this is most visible at entry-level. Globally, more than one in three young workers are employed in occupations with medium to high exposure to AI-driven task change. How these roles evolve will have significant implications for organizational performance, workforce participation and economic mobility.
Will learning curated by employers replace degrees? — from universityworldnews.com by Louise Nicol
If universities do not future-proof their offer through deeper and more credible partnerships with employers and industry, what exactly prevents employers from educating and training people themselves?
This is why the future of higher education depends on far deeper and more operational partnerships with industry. Not symbolic advisory boards or occasional guest lectures but genuine co-design of curricula, shared ownership of applied projects and clear accountability for graduate capability.
Universities that integrate live industry problems, cross-faculty collaboration and work-based learning into the core of their programmes make themselves harder to replace. Those that acknowledge the existence of external learning platforms and deliberately build them into a broader educational journey strengthen rather than weaken their position.
The real risk for universities is not replacement but marginalisation. Employers will not abandon universities out of hostility or ideology. They will do so pragmatically if universities fail to add distinctive value beyond what employers can now deliver themselves.
The Current State of Play: AI in Higher Education and the Road Ahead — from er.educause.edu by Tanya Gamby, David Kil, Rachel Koblic, Paul LeBlanc, Mihnea Moldoveanu and George Siemens
The conventional explanation for this strategic vacuum points to the speed of technological change; it is moving too fast for institutions built for deliberation. That is true. . . and incomplete. The deeper issue is cultural. In fairness to higher education, many industries are struggling to keep up with the pace of AI advances. Higher education, however, moves even more slowly and is not built for the kind of transformational speed now underway. Getting institutional stakeholders to engage, rethink the work, and move faster may be the central challenge facing presidents and chancellors today, and that’s saying a lot in such volatile times.
From DSC:
I highlighted this paragraph because it hits upon the key item involved here — culture. “The deeper issue is cultural.” I think that’s a very true statement.
Part of the culture and setup of many institutions includes giving faculty members full rein of their classes and their departments. Faculty members have a great deal of leeway and power in how they do things. So trying to get X faculty members to get on board — including the Department Chairs — is not an easy task.
Another part of culture involves being willing — or not — to change in the first place. Some institutions are like Google and are used to making changes and being more innovative. But those institutions are not the norm, at least in my experience. And this doesn’t even address another topic the article mentioned — the pace of these changes. As the authors point out, most institutions of traditional higher education are not equipped to deal with the current pace of change (nor are most of our other types of institutions and our corporations as well).
I’m going to end this posting with another brief excerpt from the article:
Institutions rooted in human relationships, committed to truth-seeking, and oriented toward the full development of persons play a central role. AI cannot manufacture the experience of mattering to another human being. It cannot model intellectual courage or ethical discernment. It cannot build the kind of community in which students discover who they are and what they believe.
These are not small things. They are, in fact, the things most worth doing. At their best, colleges and universities are not only preparing better workers but shaping individuals and strengthening society.
From DSC:
Following are several companies that are using AI to connect people to work. That’s a significant piece of my Learning from the Living [AI-Based Class] Room vision.
These companies were listed on an article entitled,
“Can AI be an effective career coach?”
— from achievepartners.com and Ryan Craig
FutureFit AI
Bridge the gap between talent, training, and employment at scale
AI-powered workforce technology connecting people to careers, employers to talent, and workforce partners to tools for integrated and intelligent workforce systems.
Empowering every job seeker with personalized AI coaching. Helping organizations scale career services and improve outcomes.
Empower Students with Career-Ready Skills
Help students discover career pathways, develop essential skills, and connect with opportunities. PathPilot provides personalized guidance that scales across your entire institution.
- AI-powered career exploration and pathway planning
- Skills assessment aligned with NACE competencies
- Resume builder and interview preparation tools
- Job matching with local and national employers
- Institutional analytics and outcome tracking
- Integration with existing career services systems
Pathific — Design your future
The all-in-one platform that connects your strengths to programs, careers, and real salary outcomes — powered by AI.
High school, post-secondary, newcomer to Canada, or career change — Pathific meets you where you are.
Your all-in-one career compass
Quality career guidance shouldn’t depend on where you go to school, when you start your journey, or where you come from. Using the latest AI and comprehensive Canadian data, we built a platform that gives everyone clear, data-driven pathways to their future. No more one-size-fits-all advice. No more guessing. Just your strengths, connected to real data.
See Where Your Skills Can Take You | Find new career path opportunities with one simple search.
OpportuNext from Signal49 Research is a free-to-use career tool created in partnership with the Future Skills Centre. Using big data, it matches a person’s skills with viable career paths — often including some you have not considered.
If AI Eats the Entry-Level Job, Where Do Young People Learn to Work? (Ryan Craig, Achieve Partners) — from humanistxyz.substack.com by Allison Dulin Salisbury; via Ryan Craig
“The public should not be subsidizing colleges whose students lack relevant, paid, in-field work experience.”
That is the trap at the center of this conversation: everyone wants to hire someone with three years of experience, and almost no one wants to provide those three years.
And Ryan’s policy prescription is unusually concrete: pay employers to hire and train apprentices, following the countries that have scaled apprenticeship far faster than the U.S.; require colleges receiving federal student aid to provide relevant, paid, in-field work experience; and build a market of intermediaries that can make the whole thing operational.
Ryan’s view is that higher education remains critically important. But college without meaningful work experience may become a much worse bet, especially for students who cannot afford to guess wrong.
Important insights from this PwC global jobs report — from linkedin.com by Ross Dawson & PwC
Why Students Aren’t All In on AI—And What They Want From Colleges — from insidehighered.com by Colleen Flaherty
New Student Voice data reveal students are embracing AI as a learning tool while worrying about dependence, career disruption and inconsistent institutional responses.
Read on for six takeaways from the survey and additional insights—including how institutions can start to close the gap between students’ optimism about AI as a learning tool and their faith in their colleges’ ability to help them navigate change.
Takeaway 1: More students are using AI than ever for coursework, while a significant share—20 percent—remain resisters.
Takeaway 2: “Worried about dependence” is the most common student stance on AI.
Takeaway 3: A majority of all students expect AI to somewhat (39 percent) or very (16 percent) negatively impact their career prospects.
Takeaway 4: Just one in 10 students says that their institution is handling AI’s rise very well, in a thoughtful and proactive way.
OPINION: If higher education wants to rebuild public trust, start with making college affordable — from hechingerreport.org by John B. King, Jr.
Addressing high tuition, food insecurity and child care needs are important first steps
Higher education is under siege, with many students and parents balking at high costs. In a series of op-eds, university leaders lay out their efforts to keep college affordable. This is the first in the series.
For many people across the country, paying for college is the largest investment they will ever make. Increasingly, it’s one that feels out of reach.
Over the past two decades, tuition and fees at private, national universities have jumped by 112 percent; at some “elite” and highly selective schools the annual cost of attendance now approaches $100,000.
If higher education is to rebuild public trust, affordability can’t be an afterthought. It must be at the center of our strategic focus.
Also from The Hechinger Report, see:
- What it’s like to enter the job market in the middle of an AI revolution — from hechingerreport.org by Neal Morton
‘It’s not looking good’: The unemployment rate for recent grads is the highest in five years, but AI is not primarily to blame — at least not yet
Addendum on 6/10/25:
The Real Mission of Higher Education Is Hiding in Plain Sight — from insidehighered.com by John Warner
A guest post laying out a path forward for all institutions.
Most colleges and universities are not actually organized around learning. They’re organized around teaching, research productivity, rankings, revenue, and the preservation of institutional prestige. Students sense this, even when they can’t articulate it. The public senses it, too. Academic researchers themselves have been making this argument for decades, but it has rarely felt more urgent than it does right now.
The Yale report says, wisely, that “trust is earned by doing what you say you’re going to do.” Universities say they’re about learning. The way to rebuild trust is to actually mean it and to build institutions that prove it.
The Yale committee is right that trust must be rebuilt through action over messaging. The most fundamental action, and the one most often overlooked, is this: Get learning right.
From DSC:
Could this be a part of our future learning ecosystems? Education as a personalized content feed.
Coursera wants users to learn through shorter, faster content — from digitaltrends.com by Moinak Pal
Coursera wants online learning to feel more like TikTok
.
Online learning platform Coursera is taking a page straight out of TikTok’s playbook. The company has launched a new AI-powered feed designed to serve short-form educational content in a scrollable, personalized format, signaling a major shift in how digital learning platforms may try to keep users engaged.
The feature introduces bite-sized video lessons, clips, and explainers curated through artificial intelligence based on a user’s interests, learning habits, career goals, and previous course activity. Instead of committing to hour-long lectures or full certification programs upfront, users can now discover short educational snippets designed to make learning feel more casual, accessible, and addictive.
Users scroll through a feed of short educational videos and AI-curated learning moments covering topics ranging from coding and business to AI, productivity, data science, and personal development.
Addendum:
AI Budgets in Education Show No Sign of Decline — from campustechnology.com by Rhea Kelly
Key Takeaways
- Education AI budgets are holding steady or increasing: Wasabi found that 98% of education organizations expect AI infrastructure budgets to increase or remain steady, with 46% planning increases.
- Storage costs are the top AI implementation challenge: Half of education respondents cited data storage issues, including storage and access costs, as the No. 1 challenge for AI projects.
- Cloud security and ROI remain pressure points: Only 47% feel confident keeping data unaltered and operational after a cyberattack, 44% lost access to public cloud data after an attack, and 37% of AI projects currently show positive ROI.
What AI-Enabled Education Actually Looks Like When It’s Working for Workforce Students — from gettingsmart.com by Stephen Griffin
Key Points
- Institutions can use AI to make skills, pathways, and job outcomes visible to students and employers in ways traditional transcripts cannot.
- Academic affairs, workforce development, career services, and employers need a shared definition of readiness and competency before tools can deliver meaningful value.
The second is portable competency records. Learning and employment records — AI-enabled documentation of what a student knows and can do, expressed in language employers recognize — are the infrastructure that makes credentials legible across the education-to-employment continuum. When a student can show an employer not just “completed Supply Chain Management 101” but “demonstrated proficiency in inventory optimization, route planning, and logistics software at the industry-recognized level,” the credential stops being abstract. It becomes evidence. Building these records requires investment in tools, yes — but more importantly, it requires faculty, workforce development staff, and employer partners to agree on what competency actually looks like before the technology is ever purchased.
Workplace Readiness: Can Higher Education Develop AI-Ready Students? — from learningguild.com by Eddie Lin and Roshan Bharwaney
For higher education to remain relevant, curricula must evolve. Here are some overarching recommendations for directions in higher education to bridge the skills gaps between universities and workplaces:
- AI ethics and safety: Prepare students to navigate issues of fairness, bias, privacy, and societal impact.
- Tackling complex questions: Emphasize open-ended challenges that blend structured and unstructured skills and reduce reliance on standardized tests and repetitive drills.
- Critical thinking: Develop new assessments for judgment, creativity, and metacognition—essential to supervise AI outputs.
- Human-AI synergy: Embed AI fluency across all disciplines, encouraging students to find the niches where human value is maximized.
- Industry connection: Maintain close industry partnerships and collaborations including open innovation opportunities and collective intelligence approaches (Bharwaney & Sleeva, 2024).
Experiential learning and communities of practice are central to this vision. Internships, simulations, and cross-disciplinary projects can help students practice human-AI collaboration, resilience, and decision-making in environments that mirror the workplace’s ambiguity and complexity.
Universities that condemn the use of AI by students risk isolating themselves from the realities of today’s workplace, where interns and new hires are expected to be or quickly become adept at using AI for routine tasks and complex projects.
Can colleges still deliver in the age of AI? One Ivy League school is investing $30 million to improve career outcomes — from cnbc.com by Jessica Dickler
Key Points
- College students are increasingly worried about what an AI-driven jobs apocalypse could mean for their employment prospects.
- To that end, many colleges and universities are racing to recalibrate.
- Even at nation’s most elite schools, the focus is shifting to career readiness.
Autistic students who make it through college face a bigger challenge: getting jobs — from hechingerreport.org by Kelly Field
Colleges now offer career readiness classes and one-on-one coaching for students with autism
Recognizing these strengths, some major companies — including tech giants SAP and Microsoft, and financial institutions Wells Fargo and J.P. Morgan Chase — began building neurodiverse hiring programs roughly a decade ago.
Those efforts have yielded significant revenue for companies, some of them say, with EY, one of the big four accounting firms, reporting in 2023 that its neurodiverse employees have generated nearly $1 billion in business value. A study by J.P. Morgan Chase found that its autistic employees were much more productive than its neurotypical ones.
Consumer finance company Synchrony, which plans to hire 15 neurodivergent interns this year, says the program has changed how teams work across the company.
Also on a somewhat-related note and also from Kelly Field at The Hechinger Report, see:
- Many boys aren’t interested in school. Can opening more career-focused high schools help?
Some research suggests that career and technical schools keep boys on track to graduation — but seats are limited