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Rethinking Higher Education in the Age of Artificial Intelligence
By Noé J. Ishaka, M.Ed.
IRJAR – Interdisciplinary Research Journal and Archives
For generations, families around the world have repeated essentially the same advice to their children: study hard, go to university, earn a degree, find a good job, and build a better life.
It was more than career advice. In many societies, a university degree represented mobility, dignity and security.
For a farmer’s daughter in Kenya, a refugee student rebuilding his life in Canada, a working-class teenager in Brazil, or the first person in a family in India to enter university, higher education could symbolize entry into an entirely different future.
But something fundamental is changing.
Artificial intelligence can now write reports, translate languages, analyze datasets, produce computer code, summarize legal documents, generate images, tutor students and perform tasks that, only a few years ago, appeared to require significant human expertise.
At the same time, university tuition has become increasingly expensive in many countries. Some graduates struggle to find employment related to their qualifications. Employers increasingly talk about skills rather than simply degrees. Online education, professional certificates, apprenticeships, microcredentials and self-directed learning have created alternatives that did not exist for previous generations.
So a question once considered almost unthinkable is becoming increasingly reasonable:
Is a university degree still worth it?
The short answer is that, for many people, yes, it still is.
But the more important answer is considerably more complicated.
The age in which simply possessing a degree could reliably distinguish someone in the labour market may be ending. The university degree is not disappearing. What is changing is what the degree must represent.
The world has not abandoned university
Any claim that universities are becoming irrelevant immediately encounters an inconvenient fact: people are attending them in record numbers.
According to UNESCO’s 2026 Higher Education Global Trends Report, approximately 269 million students are enrolled in higher education worldwide. Global participation has more than doubled since 2000. UNESCO estimates the worldwide higher-education enrolment ratio at approximately 44%.
These numbers tell us something important.
Humanity is not collectively walking away from higher education.
Quite the opposite.
In Canada, for example, Statistics Canada reported that 64% of adults aged 25 to 64 held a college or university credential in 2025, compared with 55% ten years earlier. The proportion holding bachelor’s degrees increased from 20% to 25%, while those with master’s or doctoral degrees increased from 9% to 14%.
The expansion is global, but it is far from equal. UNESCO reports extraordinarily different participation rates across regions: higher-education enrolment approaches 80% in Western Europe and North America but remains around 9% in Sub-Saharan Africa.
That difference matters.
When people in wealthy countries debate whether “too many people go to university,” millions of young people elsewhere are still asking a completely different question:
Will I ever have the opportunity to go at all?
The economic argument remains powerful
For all the criticism directed toward universities, the economic evidence still shows significant benefits from higher education on average.
In the United States, Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce reported that prime-age workers with bachelor’s degrees earned approximately 70% more at the median than workers whose highest qualification was a high-school diploma. Their unemployment rate was also substantially lower: 2.9% compared with 6.2%.
Analysis from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York similarly concluded in 2025 that the economic rate of return for the typical college graduate remained approximately 12.5%, despite rising costs and growing questions about graduate employment.
The United Kingdom provides another revealing example.
A major 2026 study by the Institute for Fiscal Studies estimated that university graduates, on average, continue to receive substantial lifetime financial benefits. But the headline average hides enormous differences among courses, institutions and individuals. Some degrees generate very large lifetime returns; others generate relatively little financial advantage.
This leads to one of the most important changes in the higher-education debate.
The question can no longer simply be:
“Is university worth it?”
We increasingly need to ask:
Which university? Which program? At what cost? For what student? In what labour market? And toward what objective?
Those are very different questions.
A degree is not one investment
We often speak about “a university degree” as though degrees were economically interchangeable.
They are not.
Georgetown researchers examining U.S. bachelor’s degrees found substantial differences in earnings depending on field of study. Among prime-age graduates, median earnings ranged from approximately US$58,000 in education and public-service fields to US$98,000 in STEM-related fields.
Among younger graduates, Georgetown found even wider variations in both earnings and unemployment depending on the major selected.
The British evidence points in the same direction.
The Institute for Fiscal Studies estimates dramatic differences in lifetime financial returns according to subject. Medicine and economics, for example, tend to produce considerably higher financial returns than several other fields, although substantial variation also exists among graduates within the same discipline.
But we should be careful about what these statistics mean.
A society cannot function on software engineers, surgeons and investment analysts alone.
It needs teachers.
Nurses.
Historians.
Psychologists.
Social workers.
Researchers.
Writers.
Artists.
Public servants.
Scientists.
Caregivers.
And many occupations whose social value cannot be measured simply by their annual salaries.
If salary becomes our only definition of educational value, we could eventually create a strange civilization: extraordinarily profitable, technologically sophisticated—and desperately short of people willing to teach its children, care for its elderly, preserve its culture or strengthen its communities.
The real lesson is therefore not that everyone should pursue the highest-paying degree.
It is that students deserve far greater transparency about what different educational choices are likely to mean economically and professionally.
Then artificial intelligence entered the classroom
The debate about university would already have been complicated by tuition, employability and alternative credentials.
Then came generative artificial intelligence.
Its arrival fundamentally changed the conversation.
The OECD noted in 2026 that generative AI is already transforming how university students learn, how instructors teach, how assessments are designed, how research is conducted and even how universities themselves are administered.
Consider something as ordinary as a traditional university essay.
For decades, professors could reasonably assume that asking a student to write 2,000 words about a subject tested several abilities simultaneously:
research,
reading,
analysis,
organization,
argumentation,
writing,
and synthesis.
Today, an AI system can produce a plausible 2,000-word essay in seconds.
That does not mean students no longer need to write.
It means the educational purpose of writing must become clearer.
Universities increasingly have to determine whether they are assessing a student’s ability to produce information or the student’s ability to think.
Those two things are no longer identical.
If AI knows the answer, what exactly should humans learn?
This may become one of the defining educational questions of our generation.
If a machine can retrieve information faster than a student, memorization alone becomes less valuable.
If AI can produce grammatically perfect prose, grammar alone becomes less differentiating.
If AI can generate computer code, basic coding ability alone may become less distinctive.
If AI can analyze a spreadsheet, routine data manipulation becomes easier to automate.
The temptation might therefore be to conclude that humans need less education.
The evidence points toward almost the opposite conclusion.
The International Labour Organization reported in 2026 that AI adoption is increasing demand for combinations of higher-order cognitive abilities, socio-emotional competencies, digital skills, adaptability, AI literacy and human agency.
Interestingly, even highly technological occupations still require strongly human capabilities.
ILO analysis of job vacancies found that employers seeking AI expertise frequently also demanded cognitive, communication, social and customer-service skills. The emerging labour market appears to reward not simply people who understand machines, but people who can combine technology with judgment, domain knowledge and human interaction.
That distinction is crucial.
AI may make information cheaper.
It may therefore make wisdom more valuable.
The university of the AI age cannot simply transfer information
For centuries, one of the university’s central economic advantages was access to knowledge.
Professors knew things students did not.
Libraries contained materials ordinary households could not obtain.
Universities possessed laboratories, journals, intellectual networks and specialized expertise.
The internet weakened the scarcity of information.
Artificial intelligence is accelerating its collapse.
A teenager with a smartphone can now ask an AI tutor to explain quantum mechanics, analyze Shakespeare, practice French conversation, generate mathematics exercises or introduce economic theory.
The information itself is increasingly abundant.
Universities therefore face a profound strategic question:
What can they offer that information technology cannot?
The answer may determine which institutions thrive over the next generation.
The strongest universities may increasingly distinguish themselves not through information delivery but through experiences that develop:
critical thinking — distinguishing credible evidence from convincing nonsense;
intellectual discipline — learning to think beyond immediate intuition;
scientific reasoning — understanding how knowledge is tested rather than merely repeated;
ethical judgment — asking not only what technology can do, but what humans should do;
collaboration — working effectively with people whose expertise and perspectives differ;
communication — translating complex ideas into understandable arguments;
creativity — generating genuinely useful questions and new combinations of ideas;
professional identity — learning the standards and responsibilities of a discipline;
human relationships — mentorship, networks, teamwork and communities of inquiry;
and perhaps most importantly,
the ability to learn continuously.
Because in a rapidly changing labour market, graduation can no longer mean that education is finished.
The new literacy: knowing how to question the machine
When calculators became widespread, mathematics did not disappear.
What changed was the type of mathematical ability that became valuable.
AI may produce a similar transition on a much larger scale.
Tomorrow’s graduate may not be judged primarily by whether they can produce information faster than a machine.
They may be judged by whether they can determine:
Is the AI’s answer correct?
What evidence supports it?
What assumptions does it contain?
What has it overlooked?
Is the source reliable?
Is the recommendation ethical?
What happens if we implement it?
Who benefits?
Who bears the risk?
And perhaps most importantly:
What question should we have asked in the first place?
That is not technological literacy alone.
It is intellectual maturity.
But there is another world outside Silicon Valley
Discussions about AI and higher education can easily become excessively centred on wealthy countries.
The challenge looks different from Lagos, Kinshasa, Dhaka, Port-au-Prince or rural communities across the Global South.
For millions of students, the immediate educational problem is not whether AI will replace university.
It is whether quality university education is available at all.
UNESCO estimates that countries invest very different shares of national resources in tertiary education, with average public expenditure far lower in low-income countries than in wealthy ones.
Infrastructure gaps matter.
Reliable electricity matters.
Internet connectivity matters.
Laboratories matter.
Libraries matter.
Research grants matter.
Faculty salaries matter.
Academic freedom matters.
Access to journals matters.
The ability to participate in international research networks matters.
A brilliant student does not become less brilliant because she was born in a village without a research university.
Yet opportunity remains profoundly geographical.
Artificial intelligence could help reduce some of these barriers by expanding access to tutoring, translation, research assistance and educational materials.
But it could also deepen inequality.
A student with advanced AI tools, high-speed internet, expert professors and a well-funded laboratory is not competing under the same conditions as a student accessing university through unstable electricity and expensive mobile data.
Technology does not automatically democratize education.
Access determines whether technology reduces inequality or multiplies it.
We also need to stop pretending university is the only respectable pathway
Defending universities should not require devaluing other forms of education.
One of the mistakes many societies have made is turning higher education into a social hierarchy.
University became associated with intellectual success.
Vocational education became something students supposedly chose when university was unavailable.
That distinction makes increasingly little sense.
Modern economies desperately need electricians, technicians, construction specialists, machinists, health-care workers, advanced manufacturing professionals and skilled tradespeople.
Some jobs require four-year degrees.
Others require college diplomas.
Others require professional certification.
Others require apprenticeships.
Others may increasingly be entered through combinations of microcredentials, employer training and demonstrated competence.
The objective of an educational system should not be to send everyone to university.
Nor should it be to discourage university.
The objective should be to help every person develop valuable capabilities and connect those capabilities with meaningful opportunities.
Education should not be a prestige competition.
It should be a human-development system.
Employers are increasingly asking, “What can you do?”
For much of the twentieth century, the university degree functioned partly as a signal.
An employer who saw a bachelor’s degree could infer a certain level of literacy, perseverance and intellectual ability.
As degrees became more common, that signal weakened somewhat.
A credential still matters—but employers increasingly want additional evidence.
Can you communicate?
Can you lead?
Can you solve an ambiguous problem?
Can you work across cultures?
Can you use AI responsibly?
Can you interpret data?
Can you collaborate?
Can you apply theory?
Can you learn something unfamiliar without waiting for someone to teach it to you?
This is why internships, research experience, portfolios, professional networks, community engagement and work-integrated learning may become increasingly important complements to the traditional transcript.
A degree that says only “I attended university” may gradually lose power.
A degree that demonstrates “I know how to think, learn, create, collaborate and solve meaningful problems” remains enormously valuable.
Universities must change too
It would be easy to place the burden entirely on students.
That would be unfair.
Universities themselves must adapt.
Higher education cannot charge students increasingly significant sums while delivering programmes designed for labour markets that existed twenty years ago.
Institutions should regularly ask:
Are our curricula aligned with emerging knowledge and professions?
Do students encounter AI as both a tool and an object of critical examination?
Are assessments measuring genuine learning?
Do graduates receive meaningful career preparation?
Are employers involved appropriately in curriculum conversations without turning universities into mere corporate training centres?
Are internships and experiential-learning opportunities available?
Do professors receive support to redesign teaching for the AI era?
Are universities preparing students for one job—or for several decades of occupational change?
The OECD reports that governments and higher-education systems are already beginning to develop policies around responsible AI use, institutional governance, AI competencies, data protection, procurement and evaluation. Yet adoption remains uneven.
UNESCO’s global report similarly found that while national AI policies have expanded, institutional strategies remain much less common across higher education.
The institutions that simply prohibit AI may eventually discover that prohibition is not an educational strategy.
The institutions that allow students to outsource all thinking to AI will have failed just as badly.
The challenge is to teach students how to use powerful tools without surrendering intellectual responsibility to them.
What about the humanities?
Whenever conversations about employment and technology dominate education, philosophy, history, literature and the arts tend to find themselves defending their existence.
That may be shortsighted.
A world filled with increasingly powerful machines may actually increase the importance of disciplines that ask deeply human questions.
Technology can tell us what is possible.
History can remind us what has happened before.
Philosophy can ask whether something should be done.
Literature can illuminate motives and experiences statistics cannot capture.
Psychology can help explain human behaviour.
Sociology can reveal how institutions and communities react to technological disruption.
The humanities should certainly engage with employability.
But reducing their value exclusively to starting salaries misunderstands education.
The future may not belong to STEM instead of the humanities.
It may belong to people capable of integrating technical competence with historical understanding, communication, ethics and human insight.
The engineer who understands ethics may design better systems.
The physician who understands psychology may treat patients better.
The entrepreneur who understands society may build better organizations.
And the humanities graduate who understands data and AI may possess a combination of abilities that becomes increasingly valuable.
A degree should be viewed as a platform, not a guarantee
Perhaps the biggest mistake previous generations made was presenting university as a transaction:
Get degree → receive career.
That model is weakening.
A university degree should increasingly be understood as a platform.
It gives a person knowledge, networks, methods, credentials and opportunities.
What happens next depends on what the person builds upon that foundation.
Two students can graduate from the same programme with radically different outcomes because one combined the degree with internships, research, mentorship, digital skills, professional networks and practical experience while the other completed only the formal requirements.
The diploma may be identical.
The human capital is not.
The question parents and students should ask
Families around the world will continue sitting around kitchen tables discussing university.
They should.
But perhaps the conversation needs to change.
Instead of simply asking:
“Which degree should you get?”
families might ask:
What problems do you want to help solve?
What are you genuinely good at?
Which abilities will this programme develop?
What careers does it realistically connect to?
What will it cost?
What alternatives exist?
What practical experience will you gain?
What technologies are transforming this profession?
What skills will remain valuable if the profession changes?
Who will mentor you?
What networks will you build?
And perhaps most importantly:
Who will you become through the process?
That last question is easy to neglect because it cannot be entered neatly into an Excel spreadsheet.
Yet education has never been exclusively about income.
At its best, education expands a person’s intellectual world.
It introduces ideas.
It challenges assumptions.
It provides language for understanding complex problems.
It brings people into contact with cultures, disciplines and perspectives they might otherwise never encounter.
It can give someone the confidence to enter rooms their parents never imagined entering.
Those effects are difficult to calculate.
They are nevertheless real.
So, is university still worth it?
The evidence does not support the claim that university has become useless.
On average, higher education continues to correlate with stronger employment prospects and higher lifetime earnings in many countries.
But averages can conceal enormous differences.
University is increasingly a conditional investment, not an automatic guarantee.
Its value depends on the programme, institution, cost, labour market, student’s objectives, opportunities for practical experience and—more than ever—the capabilities developed alongside the credential.
Artificial intelligence does not make education obsolete.
It makes shallow education obsolete.
If education consists mainly of memorizing information, reproducing predictable essays and collecting credits, AI exposes its weakness.
But if education develops judgment, curiosity, scientific reasoning, creativity, ethics, communication, expertise and the capacity to keep learning, its value may actually increase.
Because the central competition of the coming decades will not necessarily be humans versus machines.
It may be between people who know how to think and work effectively with powerful machines and those who do not.
The universities that understand this distinction will survive.
The best will thrive.
The others may continue issuing degrees while gradually losing their relevance.
And students will increasingly recognize the difference.
Beyond the diploma
Perhaps we should therefore retire one old question.
Instead of asking whether a university degree is worth it, we should ask something more demanding:
What kind of education is worth four years of a human life?
That question changes everything.
It requires universities to justify not simply their credentials but their contribution to human development.
It requires employers to recognize capabilities rather than prestige alone.
It requires governments to create multiple high-quality pathways between education and meaningful work.
It requires students to become active architects of their education rather than passive recipients of courses.
And it requires society to remember that the purpose of education has never been merely to produce employees.
Education also produces researchers, entrepreneurs, teachers, citizens, leaders, innovators and people capable of examining the world critically enough to improve it.
Artificial intelligence may become capable of answering millions of questions.
The deeper responsibility of education will remain profoundly human:
to prepare people capable of asking the questions that matter.
And that may be more important now than ever.
IRJAR Global Questions explores major issues shaping research, education, development and human life across the world. The series brings interdisciplinary evidence into conversation with perspectives from both the Global North and Global South.