{"id":612531,"date":"2026-04-18T14:25:10","date_gmt":"2026-04-18T14:25:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/612531\/"},"modified":"2026-04-18T14:25:10","modified_gmt":"2026-04-18T14:25:10","slug":"its-time-for-students-to-start-committing-to-colleges-the-age-of-ai-is-making-it-complicated","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/612531\/","title":{"rendered":"It\u2019s time for students to start committing to colleges. The age of AI is making it complicated"},"content":{"rendered":"

New York\u00a0\u2014\u00a0\n <\/p>\n

\n Mary Akkerman has visited more than 30 college campuses with her children, one now at Stanford and another still in high school. She especially wanted them to get degrees that lead to good jobs \u2013 but figuring that out, said the Sioux Falls, South Dakota, parent, was a major challenge, thanks in part to the rapid advance of AI and its effects on the job market.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cI constantly grapple with the idea of \u2018what is value,\u2019\u201d Akkerman said.\n <\/p>\n

\"Mary<\/p>\n

\n Nationally, the deadline for most students to commit to a college is around May 1, College Decision Day. But this year, parents and students are trying to figure out what counts as a \u201cgood return\u201d for an education in a shifting labor market. Majors once thought of as golden tickets, like computer science, might not carry the same value as AI reshapes the tech industry. But what majors might instead benefit remains an unanswered question.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cThere is even more confusion now than there ever was,\u201d said Brianna Angelucci, a parent and a college advisor with the Access to College Experts network, a subscription-based group that provides college preparation services.\n <\/p>\n

\n Average tuition and fees grew by 3.4% for the 2025 to 2026 school year for public four-year-out-of-state institutions, totaling $31,880 per year, while private nonprofit colleges increased by 4% to reach $45,000 per year, before adjusting for inflation, according to the College Board<\/a>.\n <\/p>\n

\n At the same time, rapid advances in artificial intelligence are reshaping expectations for entry-level jobs and for recent graduates to land their first jobs<\/a>. That makes it harder for families to predict how reliably a degree could translate into stable employment.\n <\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

\n \u201cBack in the day, we could go to college and major in what we loved\u2026 It was easy for me to find work, but these days, it\u2019s not,\u201d said Kate Hilgenberg, a 50-something New Yorker with one child in college and a high school junior starting applications in the fall.\n <\/p>\n

\n Questions about which degree makes the most sense helped shape her thoughts on her kids\u2019 future careers.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cI\u2019m very glad my kids are going into STEM fields, because I feel like those are less able to be taken over by AI,\u201d Hilgenberg said. \u201cI wouldn\u2019t let my kid go to school to be an illustrator at this point, because AI is just taking over.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n As a result, in part, of her concerns, Hilgenberg said she set firm limits on what she is willing to contribute to her children\u2019s college expenses, leaving them to decide whether taking on debt is worth it.\n <\/p>\n

\n Average student loan debt at graduation has increased 41% since 2007, after adjusting for inflation, according to the Education Data Initiative. College students face an average loan debt of $39,457 at graduation.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cYou have to be smart about how much student loan debt you\u2019re taking out, especially as repayment plans have become less favorable to borrowers,\u201d said Daniel A. Collier, a professor of adult and higher education at the University of Memphis.\n <\/p>\n

\n While the long-run impact of AI remains unclear, Collier emphasized that parents should keep the lasting benefits of a degree in mind, like on average higher life-time earnings and employment endurance during recessionary periods. Students with four-year degrees earn about 60% more than high school graduates and are less likely to be unemployed according to the College Board<\/a>.\n <\/p>\n

\n But that return can vary widely by major, the College Board said \u2013 and how AI plays into that mix will depend on how higher education meets the demands of the workforce.\n <\/p>\n

\"Jobseekers<\/p>\n

\n For many parents, AI uncertainty is influencing how they guide their children towards certain careers and away from others.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cI encourage them to find majors that are focusing on skills that, I hate to say it, but that make money,\u201d said Lucy Hughes, a North Carolina parent of two high school students preparing for college.\n <\/p>\n

\n College is already \u201chighway robbery,\u201d Hughes said, adding that worries about how AI will impact the job market have made her more reluctant to take on debt to help her children pay for school and pickier about what they study.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cIf my students wanted to be teachers, I would say, \u2018No, I\u2019m not paying for that,\u2019 and I was a teacher,\u201d she noted.\n <\/p>\n

\n Alternatives like two-year degrees, trade programs and the military have become \u201cmore AI proof,\u201d bets that are less expensive than a traditional degree for many parents, Akkerman noted.\n <\/p>\n

\n Hughes added that community college paths have become normalized for her North Carolina community, and that the trades can send students into careers faster and with more certainty than an expensive degree in a field with unknown AI exposure.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cWith AI in the past few years, it really throws a wrench in the whole process for parents,\u201d Angelucci, the college advisor, said.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"New York\u00a0\u2014\u00a0 Mary Akkerman has visited more than 30 college campuses with her children, one now at Stanford…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":612532,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[62,276,277,49,48,61],"class_list":{"0":"post-612531","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-ca","12":"tag-canada","13":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/612531","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=612531"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/612531\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/612532"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=612531"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=612531"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=612531"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}