Why Liberal Arts Education Still Matters For Teens In The Age of AI
The Cheerios crumbs were stuck to the edge of my 17-year-old’s laptop screen last month when he leaned back and said he was putting down history as his first choice major. My husband paused mid-coffee sip and nodded at the open ChatGPT tab in the corner of the display. “AI can write a 10-page history paper in 2 minutes,” he said. “Why pay $40k a year for you to learn something a machine can do faster?”
I’m a high school English teacher, so I get the question. I hear it from parents every fall during college application season, over parent-teacher conferences and soccer carpool. When every job posting seems to mention coding or data analysis, and AI can crank out essays, analyze literature, and summarize historical events faster than any senior thesis, it feels logical to steer kids away from humanities majors toward something more “future-proof.”
Two weeks before that kitchen table conversation, a former student of mine named Mia stopped by my classroom to catch up. She graduated three years ago with an English degree, and for the first year after college, she worked part-time at a clothing boutique while applying for jobs. Most of her relatives told her she’d wasted her degree, that she should go back to school for nursing. When she got called for an interview for a patient outreach role at a local pediatric clinic, she almost didn’t go.
The job asked candidates to draft a one-page information sheet for parents of newly diagnosed autistic kids. Mia told me every other candidate used AI to write their draft. She used AI too, for the first pass to get all the medical terms right. But then she cut the clunky line that read “Please consult your developmental care team for questions related to your child’s individualized prognosis” and replaced it with “It’s okay to feel overwhelmed right now—we’re here to answer your questions one at a time.” She cut the three dense paragraphs at the end and turned them into bullet points, noting that most parents read this while waiting for school pickup or between therapy appointments, so they don’t have time for extra text.
She got the job. The hiring manager told her later that her draft was the only one that felt like it was written for a real person. That’s the part no one talks about when we say AI can do liberal arts work: AI can write the words, but it can’t tell you who those words are for, or what those people actually need to hear. Liberal arts teaches that.
I don’t argue with parents who worry about job prospects anymore. I get that paying for college is a huge investment, and no one wants their kid stuck working retail after four years of school. But I’ve started sharing three small, concrete things I tell my own kid and the parents I work with, that don’t require writing off a liberal arts degree to land stable work.
First, instead of asking “what job will you get with that degree?” ask “what problem do you want to solve with that degree?” It shifts the conversation from a list of job titles to what the kid actually cares about, and it helps them connect their interests to real work. When my son said he wanted to study history, he didn’t say he wanted to be a professor. He said he wanted to figure out why so many people in our country can’t talk about politics without fighting, that learning how people got to their beliefs over time would help him bring people together. That’s a problem, not just a major.
Second, encourage them to add one small, low-effort practical skill that pairs with their degree. A history major can take a 10-week community college course in content writing or archival management. An English major can learn basic social media scheduling through a free online course. It doesn’t require switching to a business major, it just gives them a concrete skill to put on a resume that employers recognize. Mia took a free 4-week course on health communication on Coursera while she was working at the boutique, that’s what made her stand out enough to get the interview.
Third, help them find one small, local opportunity to use their skills. It doesn’t have to be a fancy paid internship at a big company. A sociology major can help the local housing coalition write their annual community report. A philosophy major can volunteer to moderate local community conversations. A history major can help the local historical society transcribe old oral histories. It gives them real work experience to talk about in interviews, which matters more than the name of their degree.
My husband and I still have conversations about how we’ll pay for college, and whether my son will change his mind about history. He might—he’s 17, he changes his mind about what he wants for dinner every other day. Last weekend, though, he organized a small community meeting at our local library about affordable housing in our town. He wrote the flyers, answered questions from confused residents, mediated a tense conversation between a local developer and a mom who was worried about losing her rental home. AI could have written the flyers. It could have pulled up the zoning laws to answer the questions. But it couldn’t have sat with that mom after the meeting and listened to her talk about worrying about being homeless with two kids. It couldn’t have helped her fill out the application for a rent relief program, or made her feel like someone heard her.
We don’t know what the job market will look like in 10 years. No degree is really future-proof. But right now, the things liberal arts teaches—how to listen, how to read between the lines, how to talk to another person like they’re human—are the same things AI can’t replicate. That doesn’t feel like a bad investment to me.
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