The AI Challenge to Education and the Triumph of Credentialism

This post is a set of slides for a talk I gave recently, “The AI Challenge to Education and the Triumph of Credentialism.”

It’s an effort to put the challenge that artificial intelligence poses for American education in historical perspective.  Today, students can have AI do course readings for them and then write the required papers for them as well.  Soon, students will be able to hire an AI agent to sign into their account in the college course management system (Canvas, Blackboard, etc.), do all the readings, watch all the lectures, and submit all the papers — without the student ever having to get out of bed.  How great is that?

My point is that — while this is a big step forward (or backward) in the steady movement toward a system that reduces the time and effort required to get a diploma to near zero — it’s in fact only an exacerbation of a process that’s been going on for a long time within the American system of schooling.  Gaming the system has a long undistinguished history.  For many years, students have been figuring out ways to phone it in.  As the title of my 1997 book put it, they have learned “How to Succeed in School Without Really Learning.  

See what you think.

Here’s a link to the PowerPoint version of this talk.

Here’s a link to the PDF version.