Is Artificial Intelligence Reshaping The Value Of A College Degree?
Updated: 2 hours ago
By Andrea Briones
As artificial intelligence continues to reshape the job market, Barry University students question whether their majors will remain valuable. Students and professors share their perspectives on AI’s impact on future careers and how higher education is adapting.
Like thousands of college students, Megan Edma, 21, a junior majoring in communication, is working toward a degree she hopes will lead to a career after graduation.
But as artificial intelligence becomes increasingly capable of performing tasks once reserved for people like her, one question follows her towards graduation: “Will AI take her job?”
She isn’t the only college student facing that question. According to Monster, 89% of grads fear AI will replace entry-level jobs.
“It can impact career opportunities because I feel like we can become numb to creating things ourselves and relying on AI to do what we’ve been doing for years,” said Edma, who aspires to work in the creative space. “In some classes they allow us to use AI, but I don’t feel like they are preparing me to work alongside AI because they’re kind of going against it, which is not allowing us to see how we can navigate a new life with AI on the rise.”
Barry University is actively preparing its students for the changing workplace through initiatives like AI Center, which shows students how to use AI as a tool, and incorporating AI across disciplines like computer science and communications—two of the degrees that some recent graduates have lived to regret obtaining, according to a study done by ZipRecruiter.
Barry's Department of Communication isn’t taking this news lightly.
This semester, it has introduced Advertising Creative and Intelligent Media (ADV-405), a course to help students learn how to create effective prompts for creating advertisements. Across other classes, professors have introduced apps like Eleven Labs, an AI audio research and deployment company that creates ultra-realistic synthetic voices and audio tools.
“Some people are predicting that AI is going to replace human beings. In my opinion, it's going to create new ways for people to be creative,” said Vicente Berdayes, communication department chair and professor of communication. “I warn [students] from getting lazy and thinking they’ve finished an assignment by just pressing a button because anyone can do that. The jobs are going to people who can use AI creatively to augment their skills. That means continuing to develop your skills.”
For communication careers, artificial intelligence is making production faster, lowering costs, data analyzing, scheduling, writing scripts and more. In theory, it should allow professionals to perform faster on repetitive tasks and focus more on work that requires human judgement and creativity.
Computer science is another degree that the ZipRecruiter study rendered useless.
But over at the Barry Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, students are learning to shift their focus towards building AI tools, rather than sticking to basic programming tasks.
In the spring, the department will introduce a course called Practical Data Science and Applied AI as part of the data analytic specialization to help students improve their AI skills like machine learning, data science and AI development.
“We have shifted, but it’s absolutely necessary, especially since at least at the early stages we can see that AI is not perfect,” said James Haralambides, the chair and professor of mathematics and computer science. “I think that it can be perfected even more with the influx of computer science students that will be knowledgeable enough to go beyond the elementary level and have critical thinking in the algorithm design.”
In the future, Haralambides is hoping to collaborate with local companies, so students have the opportunity to present their work, participate in internships and catapult them into the workforce after graduation.
Students like Kaleb Orga, a senior majoring in computer science with a specialization in cybersecurity and vice president of the AI Society, is one of many who think we should adapt.
“Initially, I was very concerned especially since computer science is so saturated and we’re just hearing that our jobs are going to be taken, but now my perspective has changed,” said Orga. “AI is changing how we learn, it can explain concepts, help debug code and speed up projects.”
In computer science, AI can perform basic coding, data processing, testing and technical support. However, actual humans will still need to define problems, evaluate AI-generated work, integrate systems and test programs.
Understanding the traditional methods ensures that professionals have the critical-thinking skills needed to determine whether an AI tool is accurate and reliable.
As artificial intelligence continues to skyrocket, the question may not be which majors will survive, but how students will adapt to it.
Corey Sykes, a senior majoring in communication with a minor in pre-law, advises students who are worried about AI taking over to “keep pushing because the human mind is smarter than any artificial intelligence.”
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