I asked how they developed the ideas.

After a brief pause, the student replied candidly: "I mostly used AI. I only edited it a bit."

The student was not lazy. This was not cheating in the traditional sense, it was a practical choice in this era.

So how are we, the people who design the education system, responding?

Many of my colleagues worry that AI will "take away jobs." That concern is valid. But a more unsettling question is not whether AI is replacing human work. It is that AI is exposing something universities have avoided confronting: Much of the knowledge we teach and test, AI already handles, often faster and more accurately.

That leads to a harsh but necessary question: What is the point of studying if jobs are disappearing? Students may not say it out loud, but they carry it into class every day.

The World Economic Forum's Future of Jobs Report 2025, based on surveys of more than 1,000 companies representing 14 million workers across 55 economies, projects that 92 million jobs will disappear before 2030.

But at the same time, 170 million new jobs will emerge. That sounds balanced, even optimistic.

But the reality is harsher. The jobs lost and the jobs created do not belong to the same people, the same places, or the same skill levels.

Students listening in a university lecture hall. Photo by Pexels/Yan Krukau

Goldman Sachs estimates that AI could affect 300 million full-time jobs worldwide. By late 2025, McKinsey reported that existing AI could automate more than 57% of working hours in the United States. The WEF also warns that 39% of core skills will change by 2030.

A student in class today, graduating in 2028, will enter a labor market where much of what they learned has already been reshaped.

I think both sides are half right.

Previous revolutions replaced muscle. The Industrial Revolution eliminated many forms of manual labor, but human thinking remained central. That thinking created engineers, accountants, lawyers, and doctors.

When ATMs spread in the 1970s and 1980s, bank tellers did not disappear. Many shifted into financial advising because judgment, empathy, and human understanding still mattered.

For generations, a university degree served as protection because education developed the one thing machines did not threaten: human intellect.

AI is different. It does not leave human thinking untouched. It turns knowledge, analysis, writing, legal reasoning, and even medical judgment into scalable products at low cost.

For the first time, a degree and accumulated knowledge no longer guarantee a place in the job market.

During earlier waves, machines replaced hands. This time, AI challenges the advantage of the educated. That is why the question "why study?" no longer sounds naive.

The model of one standard education for all has run its course.

We place hundreds of students in one lecture hall, teach the same content at the same pace, assess them with the same metrics, and call it higher education. The result is graduates who know answers but struggle to ask questions, who follow instructions but struggle to find direction. AI has simply exposed this gap.

What we need goes beyond curriculum reform or banning AI in exams. It calls for a shift in how people learn. This shift places demands on both educators and students. Learning cannot rest on fear of failure or unemployment. At that level, AI already performs better than any anxious student. Learning has to come from a real desire to understand, from curiosity, from the sense of discovery when a problem opens up.

A 2025 survey by the U.K.’s Higher Education Policy Institute found that 92% of students use AI in their studies, up from 66% a year earlier. Among them, 88% use it to complete assignments.

This is not only about academic integrity. It is a clear signal from students that the tasks being assessed are already handled by AI, and they see little reason to do them on their own.

If we keep assessing what AI can do, we turn education into a hollow race.

What AI cannot replace is not a specific skill, since skills age quickly. It cannot replace the act of learning itself, the drive to understand.

The WEF calls this "curiosity and lifelong learning" and ranks it among the fastest-growing skills needed by 2030.

Curiosity cannot be delivered through a syllabus. It grows in an environment where learners can ask their own questions.