Why a Liberal Arts Education Still Matters For Your Kid (Even With AI Everywhere)
Last month, I sat across from my 17-year-old son’s college counselor in a cramped office that smelled like burnt coffee and disinfectant wipes. The counselor tapped her laptop, where his acceptance to the state university’s English program glowed on the screen, and leaned forward. “I’m all for following your passion,” she said, “but have you two talked about what AI means for this? ChatGPT can write a 10-page essay in 30 seconds. Entry-level writing, editing, even communications jobs are disappearing fast. Wouldn’t he be safer switching to a computer science minor, or even changing his major entirely?” My son twisted the drawstring of his gray hoodie, stared at the scuff on his white sneaker, and mumbled, “I’ve thought about it.”
We left the office silent, and halfway home I pulled off the highway at the burger stand we’ve gone to since he was little. We got our usual, extra pickles for him, extra onions for me, and ate sitting on the hood of the car. That’s when I started running through all the small moments from the last year that made me sure he wasn’t making a mistake, even if no one else could see it yet.
My sister is a marketing director at a mid-sized tech company, and back in January she had to give a speech after 20% of her team was laid off. She plugged the key points into AI first, got back a perfectly polished, utterly generic speech about “exciting new opportunities” and “streamlined workflows.” It was technically correct, but it had no heart. It didn’t acknowledge that half the people being let go were her friends, that the remaining team was terrified they’d be next, that the whole layoff felt like a betrayal of the small company’s original mission. She called my son, who’d written a collection of personal essays for his high school senior project, and asked him to help. He sat with her for two hours, asked her to list the small things she’d remember about the people who were leaving, helped her weave those in, helped her say out loud that it was okay to be sad and angry, not just optimistic. When she gave the speech, half the room cried. Later, multiple people told her it was the first honest thing any leader at the company had said in two years. AI can’t do that. AI can’t know what it feels like to be in that room, what unsaid thing people need to hear. That’s the thing liberal arts teaches you: how to read the room, not just the text.
My son works 20 hours a week at the local coffee shop downtown. A few weeks ago, he told me about a regular, a 19-year-old community college student who comes in every morning before class, always gets a black coffee and never talks. One Tuesday she came in, red-eyed, and could barely get her order out. She’d just failed her nursing entrance exam, she said, and didn’t know what to do next. My son didn’t give her a big pep talk. He just handed her her coffee, added a blueberry muffin to her order for free, and said, “I’ve failed way more things than I’ve aced. It feels like the end of the world right now, but it won’t later.” He told me he got that from a line he’d read in a novel, where the main character talks about how the worst things feel huge when you’re young, but they shrink later. That’s the thing about reading hundreds of stories about people: you learn how people feel, how to meet them where they are. No algorithm can build that instinct the way living with and studying human stories does.
I get the fear. When I talk to other parents, half of them say the same thing: why would you pay for a degree that won’t get you a job? But I don’t think it’s a choice between passion and security anymore, not when every industry is shifting. The work that stays in human hands isn’t just the kind that requires coding—it’s the kind that requires human judgment, human connection, the ability to ask the right question instead of just produce an answer. If your kid wants to study liberal arts, you don’t have to force them to switch to STEM to keep them safe. There are small, concrete things you can do that don’t require giving up what they love.
First, help them add one small, marketable skill that complements their major. My son is taking a free 12-week course on content strategy and basic web design through the college’s continuing ed department before he starts in the fall. If he was a history major, he could learn digital archiving. If he was a sociology major, he could learn survey design. It doesn’t take a whole extra major, just a few extra classes that make it easier to connect their skills to a job opening. Second, practice talking about their major in concrete terms, not vague ones. When people ask “what are you going to do with an English degree?” instead of saying “I love books,” teach them to say “I study how people communicate, so I can work in non-profit outreach, health content strategy, or user experience research.” That’s way more specific, and it makes clear the skills are transferable. Third, stop treating liberal arts like a rich kid’s hobby. It’s not a luxury. It’s a set of skills that every industry needs right now, because AI can’t do the human part.
We finished our burgers in the parking lot that day. My son wiped ketchup off his hand and said he still didn’t know exactly what he wanted to do after college. He might go to grad school for creative writing, he might work in marketing, he might even end up learning some coding on the side if he wants to. I told him that’s okay. No one knows what jobs will look like in 10 years, not even the counselors. But whatever job he ends up in, the ability to understand what another person needs, to write something that sounds like a human, to spot the nuance that an algorithm misses, that’s something no one can automate away. It’s not a reckless choice. It’s a choice that fits the world we’re living in right now. We still don’t have all the answers. But for right now, this feels like the right one.
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