Why a Liberal Arts Education Still Matters For Kids In the Age of AI
The crumbs of chocolate chip cookie were stuck to the edge of my 17-year-old Lila’s college brochure last month when my phone pinged. It was my brother Mike, a software engineer who works at a mid-sized AI startup: Tell Lila to drop the English lit major idea. AI can write better than most humans now. She’ll be unhireable in 10 years. Lila leaned over my shoulder and read the text, then leaned back in her chair and twisted the silver ring she got at a zine fair. Is he right? she said. My coffee had gone lukewarm on the table, and the sun was going down over the neighbor’s roof. I didn’t have an answer ready, but I had a lot of half-formed thoughts I’ve been turning over ever since.
I got a liberal arts degree myself, back in the early 2000s – a bachelor’s in history, with a minor in creative writing. Back then, people were already saying it was a waste, that I’d never pay off my student loans working a “real job.” I do work a real job now, as a program coordinator for a local education non-profit, and last year I got a first-hand look at what AI can and can’t do. Our team was crunched for time, so we asked a popular AI tool to draft a parent handout for our after-school program for kids who struggle with school anxiety. The result was perfect. All the commas were in the right place, all the program dates were correct, it hit every bullet point we asked for. But when I read it over, I realized it was wrong. It said all kids would be expected to complete one hour of homework each day at the program. We don’t do that. We ask kids to pick 20 minutes of work that feels manageable, or skip it entirely and play basketball if that’s what they need that day. AI didn’t get that. It couldn’t know the unwritten rule we built after three years of working with these kids, the part that comes from sitting with a 12-year-old who’s crying because they can’t face another math worksheet. I rewrote the whole thing in 20 minutes, drawing on the stuff I learned in my classes – how to read what a group of people actually need, how to frame a rule so it feels supportive instead of punitive. That’s the stuff no algorithm has learned yet.
Lila’s not just studying English for a job, anyway. She spends three hours a week after school drawing and writing zines for her school’s queer student alliance. Last semester she wrote a personal essay about coming out to my mom, her grandma, who’s a first-generation immigrant from Thailand. She wrote about how grandma didn’t say anything for 10 minutes, then went to the kitchen and made her mango sticky rice, her favorite. When Lila posted the zine online, she got 40 messages from kids around the country saying they’d had almost the exact same experience, that it made them feel less alone. AI could write a generic essay about coming out to an immigrant parent. It couldn’t write that one, because it doesn’t know the way grandma’s mango sticky rice is a little too sweet, or the way Lila held her hands under the table while she waited for a response. That’s the human part, the part people still pay for, the part that still changes people.
I’ve talked to a lot of parents lately who are panicking about this, who are pushing their kids into computer science or engineering because they think that’s the only safe bet. I get the panic. I feel it too, some nights, when I’m lying awake thinking about tuition and job markets. But the thing I’ve learned is that AI is already taking entry-level STEM jobs too. Basic coding, data entry, even early-stage research work can be done by AI now. The jobs that stick aren’t the ones that just require cranking out a product. They’re the ones that require reading context, understanding what humans actually want, and making something that fits. That’s exactly what a liberal arts education teaches you.
I don’t tell parents to let their kids pick any major no matter what, no questions asked. I have three small things I do now, when I feel that panic creeping in, that work for me. First, instead of asking “what job will you get with that?” I ask what problems they like solving. Lila likes solving the problem of making people feel less alone. That’s a problem that’s not going away, no matter how much AI improves. Second, I help them pair their interest with one concrete, marketable skill that builds on what they love. Lila’s adding a minor in digital communications, so she learns how to edit websites and manage social media for small non-profits or publications – that’s a skill she can use to get a job right out of college, while she keeps writing. Third, I encourage them to get small, local internships or part-time work while they study, not just big fancy corporate ones. Lila currently writes one blog post a week for a local youth shelter, for $50 a post. It’s not a lot of money, but it’s proof she can show up, deliver work that people actually need, and build a reference that will get her the next job.
Last week, Lila got an email from a small national youth publication saying they wanted to publish her coming out essay, and they were paying her $150 for it. She cashed the check at the bank down the street, brought it home, and taped it to the fridge next to her driver’s license and her first middle school art award. Uncle Mike texted her a congratulations emoji, and that was that. We still don’t know exactly what she’ll do after college. We still argue sometimes about how much student debt is too much, and whether she should take more computer science classes just to have it on her resume. AI’s going to keep changing the job market, and I don’t have a crystal ball to see what things will look like in 10 years. But that check on the fridge says a lot. People don’t just want words. They want words that come from a human life, that know what it’s like to wait for mango sticky rice after the hardest conversation you’ve ever had. That’s the stuff a liberal arts education teaches you how to make. And that’s the stuff no machine can replace.
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