Liberal Arts Colleges + AI = a Marriage Made in Career Heaven
Yes, it is. As NVIDIA co-founder and chairman Jensen Huang challenges – Artificial Intelligence is the revenge of the English Major! And the best way for students to find their way into these high paying, high demand jobs is to do 2 things:
1. Get a degree in a Major like English, Philosophy, Arts, Sociology, History, and Psychology. Thinking skills developed through earning a Liberal Arts degree are key - critical thinking, writing, language, creativity, storytelling, communication, and understanding human contexts etc.
2. Learn basic skills like AI Model Basics
For example, Prompt Engineer is one of a hugely expanding list of high skill, high wage AI jobs. A Prompt Engineer does things like write prompts for chatbots, fine tunes AI prompts, debugs bad outputs, documents prompts in libraries, and collaborates with writers and designers. Depending on the type of company you work for a brand-new Liberal Arts college graduate could start at more than 70K a year at a small firm or more than 110K at a company like Google or Meta.
Now, a college degree isn’t required to get a job like a Prompt Engineer. But it is a huge advantage. Among other things, having a Liberal Arts degree demonstrates that you have the critical thinking and creativity skills required. Don’t shy away from those courses in Rhetorics, Semantics, Plato and Aristotle.
Have your students check these opportunities out and then explore what AI-Liberal Arts training is available at the colleges they’re interested in:
1. Georgia Institute of Technology: Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts (https://iac.gatech.edu/)
2. Purdue University: Bachelor of Arts in AI and Philosophy (https://cla.purdue.edu/academic/philosophy/students/undergraduate/majors/artificial-intelligence/index.html)
3. Kenyon College: KDH Lab & Human-Centered AI Curriculum (https://www.kenyon.edu/digital-humanities/ai-lab/)
4. New York State University System (SUNY): AI Minors (https://www.albany.edu/ai-plus)
Liberal Arts colleges and AI both know the truth of Descartes’ famous assertion Cogito, Ergo Sum (I think, therefore I am) They want people to learn how to think and know themselves. One of many differences between them though is that ChatGPT can translate I think, therefore I am into more than 100 languages quicker than I can type this sentence. Spread the good news!
If you’d like to talk more about how to help your students learn and then use a higher order thinking strategy to make more informed college decisions, please visit us at www.collegeunmazed.com or contact me at rlapan@collegeunmazed.com.
This year we want to celebrate the outstanding things so many colleges are doing to promote student academic success and life satisfaction. When you run across something a college is doing you find exciting, send it to me and we’ll help get the word out!
