It may be that part of the administration's bet is that the faculty will no longer be the heart of the university, but will be replaced or downgraded in importance due to AI soon.
Do you think China wants or needs American humanists and social scientists? I take no pleasure in saying this, but I take seriously the Idea that the Anglophone humanities have become a degenerate research program. Probably Western freedoms and values are important to many hard STEM scholars too, though.
It would take a lot for me personally to want to leave the US. The compensation and perks of good US schools would have to drop a lot before European jobs started to look good by comparison. And family matters even for people of a cosmopolitan bent. I'm not sure if this exodus will really happen.
I've been thinking a bit about the AI argument. It's possible to imagine a class taught entirely by an AI instructor, but I'm not sure there would be much demand for it. On the research front it may be that AI starts to dominate (rather than simply enhance) human scholars. Worth keeping an eye on.
Regarding the humanities and social sciences, they remain in high demand among undergraduates, and I think that part of what makes the US undergraduate experience unique and popular globally is its breadth. Think about all the great philosophy newsletters proliferating, also in high demand.
I don't want to leave the US either, and don't want our global leadership in this field eroded. But the best way to avoid this is to lay out the worst-case scenarios in great detail, which is what I've tried to do here and elsewhere.
Yeah it's hard to believe that something else will really substitute for in-person teaching. We've had lectures available on video since the 1980s, in increasingly convenient formats, and it's never had a noticeable effect. I think this goes especially if AI stays mainly text-only.
It's true, there does seem to be lots of student demand for the humanities. I wonder what would happen to that demand, though, if you got rid of the differential in grade inflation between departments. I don't think the demand would go away by any means, but I suspect it would take a hit.
It may be that part of the administration's bet is that the faculty will no longer be the heart of the university, but will be replaced or downgraded in importance due to AI soon.
Do you think China wants or needs American humanists and social scientists? I take no pleasure in saying this, but I take seriously the Idea that the Anglophone humanities have become a degenerate research program. Probably Western freedoms and values are important to many hard STEM scholars too, though.
It would take a lot for me personally to want to leave the US. The compensation and perks of good US schools would have to drop a lot before European jobs started to look good by comparison. And family matters even for people of a cosmopolitan bent. I'm not sure if this exodus will really happen.
I've been thinking a bit about the AI argument. It's possible to imagine a class taught entirely by an AI instructor, but I'm not sure there would be much demand for it. On the research front it may be that AI starts to dominate (rather than simply enhance) human scholars. Worth keeping an eye on.
Regarding the humanities and social sciences, they remain in high demand among undergraduates, and I think that part of what makes the US undergraduate experience unique and popular globally is its breadth. Think about all the great philosophy newsletters proliferating, also in high demand.
I don't want to leave the US either, and don't want our global leadership in this field eroded. But the best way to avoid this is to lay out the worst-case scenarios in great detail, which is what I've tried to do here and elsewhere.
Thanks for reading and commenting.
Yeah it's hard to believe that something else will really substitute for in-person teaching. We've had lectures available on video since the 1980s, in increasingly convenient formats, and it's never had a noticeable effect. I think this goes especially if AI stays mainly text-only.
It's true, there does seem to be lots of student demand for the humanities. I wonder what would happen to that demand, though, if you got rid of the differential in grade inflation between departments. I don't think the demand would go away by any means, but I suspect it would take a hit.