This is a NYPOST article. It links the study, which is an ‘Indeed Report’ produced by the company Indeed on its job postings. The report does not contain the words ‘Gen Z’ at all. This is a trash article.
I really really wish people didn’t just view degrees as simply a means to a job.
Like I completely get given the cost of them in some countries, that you need to do the cost/benefit analysis. But a degree should be a way of expanding your knowledge on a subject primarily because you’re interested in it.
Sure I’d be a bit miffed if my degree never resulted in a job, but I don’t think I’d ever think of it as worthless or a waste of time.
I’m guessing you either:
a) Were fortunate enough to go to uni when I did, when it was cheap
b) Have had, or had a family with, lots of disposable income
Times are different now, unfortunately. Uni is now a pathway to a job to pay off uni debt. It’s not what it used to be.
I wish that too, but you’ll have to convince companies to stop making it a hard requirement first.
I got a software degree and graduated right before chatgpt was made public. It changed everything.
I’ve done a few side projects and stuff since then, but everybody only wants AI work now and my education, while really fun and useful to me, was apparently not useful to anybody else the second AI was an option to investors.
I’m a bit bitter. I just want a job.
I personally think I would greatly enjoy college, gaining knowledge for the purpose of just gaining knowledge (after probably a couple years of remedial… everything.) In the unlikely event that i get to enjoy a retirement, that’s likely what i would want to do with my time.
Unfortunately, it is financially untenable for me to even consider higher education.
I mean I agree with you until you factor in the debt load. If it was just the loss of time but both time and being weighed down by debt as you try to support yourself. The system is screwed up.
The problem is that most colleges, at least in the US, aren’t really about expanding knowledge, they’re about checking items off a list. The vast majority of your required coursework isn’t supposed to be teaching anything, it’s to pad out your hours and inflate your tuition. And for that privilege you’ll be paying enough money every year to force the average person into multiple decades worth of debt.
Like entry level bio and English courses that simply repeat knowledge that highschool and hell, middle school already taught already.
Higher education has a ton of value but it’s not created from bs class requirements
Frustratingly, these are required now because a significant number of American high school grads didn’t actually absorb any of that information in high school. College professors have long bemoaned the declining educational attainment of incoming students (not surprisingly, starting around when W signed NCLB into law) and these remedial introductory classes are an attempt to bridge the gap between what freshmen are actually bringing in to college and where they need to be to actually grasp more advanced concepts.
This is it.
Not that it doesn’t happen here and there, but AI isn’t taking the vast numbers of jobs many people think. I use AI professionally and personally a lot. The only things that really impress me are the things I have zero ability in at all: drawing character sketches of my roleplaying characters, composing music, and telling people to go fuck themselves in a professional manner.
The code is garbage. The prose is garbage. Lyrics/poetry are garbage (occasionally entertainingly so). And the longer the prompt/response chain gets the worse the output becomes—AI literally gets dumber the harder you try to get good quality out.
I think AI is amazing, in that it is barely competent to mediocre at damn near any basic knowledge task (presuming you can trust it not to hallucinate). But it’s not an expert at anything.
What it can do is generate a first draft of something incredibly quickly, but it will always need a human hand to make it good. And based on my observations, the folks who say that’s just today and in ten years no one will need to work—are simply wrong. Time will tell, but this technology seems to get exponentially more expensive for diminishing returns on quality.
The only things that really impress me are the things I have zero ability in at all: drawing character sketches of my roleplaying characters, composing music…
Do you suppose that is the result of Gell-Mann Amneisa?
You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray’s case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues… and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.
You know how to program, so you know the AI sucks at programming. You know it sucks at poetry, synthesis research, etc etc. You don’t know how to draw, but do you suppose the AI is good at drawing?
You don’t know how to draw, but do you suppose the AI is good at drawing?
Absolutely not! That was kinda the point of what I said. It only amazes when you are operating in ignorance.
100% agreed with you there, hope I didn’t come across as argumentative.
I think Dan Olson said he saw people “praying” to ChatGPT, and I can’t think of a better analogy for it.
There’s something about the internet, isn’t there? It encourages us to presume discord when we come to the same point in two different ways. I’ll take full credit for misunderstanding your agreement and interpreting it uncharitably. I need to resist that instinct. Cheers, mate!
I know what you mean. I don’t remember always feeling so defensive on the internet lol. I think that feeling it’s a function of societal divisions.
A high-school graduate can do any job on the planet with training.
In a fair system employers would not be allowed to discriminate based on level of education and skill.
Eh, sometimes the training takes 4-8+ years, and is only achievable by people with a certain disposition or talent.
I do think it makes sense for education and work to be better integrated (apprenticeships make a lot of sense)
But “discriminating” based on education and skill is just making a decision based on the two most important factors. I don’t want some unskilled HS student as my surgeon.
If anything, I think hiring should be based on skill more, not based on previous jobs you’ve had and how good you are at interviews.
Given the current level of “intelligence” in AI models, I’m pretty tempted to say that if a job can be done by AI without any significant drop in quality, then it probably wasn’t a great job to begin with - and having a machine do it is likely the better path in the long run.
At current level, companies with AI to replace jobs are like people at the poker table trying to bluff they have a royal flush while at best they only have a straight. It’s more of a negotiation tool at its current time.
Degrees are nice but I often wonder if I should have gotten an associates and started working sooner with no debt.
Use AI and start your own business then.
