Are Universities Becoming Irrelevant in the AI Age?

So I think because of AI over the next few months and years the value of university will change somewhat and people will no longer be going to university for the education itself but they'll be going for other factors instead because education will rank pretty low down on their priority list. And I kind of described something like this in my previous video that I released like 2 years ago called why Cambridge made me dislike physics. And the point in that video is that many of the top universities that you see on ranking tables are there because of the research output of the university and historical bias. Basically can be easily measured by the number of citations academics at that university are getting and the H indexes and so forth. And there seems to be a negative correlation between research output and the teaching quality of the like university in the sense that many people who are really good at researching are also bad at teaching because all their skill set is in researching. Even at Cambridge we had Nobel Prize winning lecturers who were quite bad at actually explaining concepts and teaching and a random Indian guy on YouTube was better explaining the same concepts than them. And it kind of talks about how AI will change a landscape more in this comment over here, but you don't have to read that because I'm going to explain it. Basically, the values of university are the education, the research, the network, the clouds that you get if you go to a top university, the opportunities at the university, the alumni network as well, and also the societies. And I want to touch on the idea of the education first because that's what's going to be changed the most by AI. I kind of imagine it kind of like this. So you have the value of the institution's teaching quality on the left hand side and you have time on the right hand side. So basically the value was like really high at the beginning before the printing press. Basically in like the 1400s if you wanted to get a good education then you would go to a place like Cambridge or Oxford because the education there was like extraordinary. But then as a printing press was introduced the value slowly decreased over time as it became more and more adopted. So basically you would no longer have to go to a top university to say learn about Charles Darwin's origin of the species and natural selection because you can probably pick up a copy in your like local bookstore or library or something. And then the value decreased even further because of the internet because you could learn anything for free online instead of going to a university which meant that there were many like tech people or software engineers who just learned all the things they needed to know online and then got a really high paying job instead of going to a top university. And then when YouTube came out and became mass adopted a lot of people started posting educational content on YouTube and you could find lectures on YouTube about any topic which are often taught better than at your university itself. And I think AI will now decrease the value close to zero but not zero itself. I think the not zero itself includes things such as chemistry where you actually need to have access to a lab or like medicine or something else where you have to have like the practical equipment in front of you. But for most of the cases such as like economics or even math as well you could learn it all online and sooner or later you'll be able to have an AI which can generate like free blue one brand explanations just for you in video form which is very much like a personalized tutor. Some people are already using AI with their education. And I think like 95% plus of university students use chat GPT and you can make flashcards with it. You can like have it explain things to you. You can use tools like notebook which I previously covered and so forth. Basically, I think now that picking one university over another university because it has better education will no longer be a good enough answer. And I kind of said this in this comment over here where I said it over the next few months and years. I think AI will democratize education to extend that everyone at every university who is serious about learning can receive a similar level of education by having Chad GBT's latest models. Right now, as of April 2025, 04 mini and 03 explain the lecture content really well. And I kind of said that maybe lecturers and teachers will notice that most of the students are using Chad GBT to understand the teaching material and they'll stop putting more effort into explaining things well in their classes and the teaching quality will worsen which will lead to some kind of negative feedback loop where the teaching quality becomes worse. more people use chaptt and other AI models to explain things to them and so forth. So basically I think now the educational quality of many universities will decrease and going to a university just for the education itself is not like a valid enough reason but that does not apply if you're applying to something which is like medicine or like law which is like accredited by institutions and you actually have to have a degree in law or medicine to be able to practice it. And now for the research side of things if you want to do research in the future then having a bachelor's masters and maybe even a PhD can be helpful but it depends on what kind of research you want to do. If you want to do research that is like related to material sciences or chemistry and it requires having equipment then going to a university can be good for that because you would be unable to access that equipment otherwise to do that kind of research. But if you're doing like mathematical research or like physics research uh some forms of physics research or just anything else that requires mostly computers then you can likely do a better job of research by using Ofrey or some other models that come out in the future. But you don't even have to go to university to be able to do research as well. For example, like Chris Ola, which is one of the like founding uh people at OpenAI, he dropped out of university, I think one year in and then became one of the best researchers at OpenAI. And yeah, you can see all the papers that he's published and all the citations he got on some of these papers as well. And even if you go on his LinkedIn, it's kind of funny because it says University of Real Life Experience over here. So, this is kind of mixed like if you want to do research in the future, depends on what kind of research you want to do. And if you want to do say machine learning research, as Chris Ola showed, you don't even have to go to university to be able to do that. So I'm going to put this as like okay

maybe it will stay the same maybe it will change depending on some people. Now I think one of the next values of university that will now increase and make it still worthwhile going is the network itself. So I kind of have a diagram over here. This is you in the middle and these are your friends around you in green and your network is actually your friends of your friends or acquaintances of your friends because in a book called the defining decade why your 20ies matter and how to make the most of them. Now I've read this book it's not very good to read the whole book so you should probably just read a summary about it. And in the book, the author refers to these as weak ties. So she says that weak ties are the people we have met or are connected to somehow but currently do not know well. Weak ties are also the former employers or professors or any other associations who have not been promoted to close friends. She says weak ties give us access to something fresh. They know things and people that we don't know. Information and opportunity spread further and faster through weak ties than through close friends because weak ties have fewer overlapping contacts. And basically I think university is one of the best ways of making a lot of weak ties that you can go to in the future. Often something that happens is that one of your weak ties starts a business and then they say to you, "Hey, do you want to join my business? " Because they remember you being really good at one particular thing. And the weak ties can work well in other cases. So you can ask someone that you worked with on a university project for a referral because they are now working on a company that you're interested in or you can get a research opportunity that way or you can just get information about something that you not previously know about. So yeah, I think university is still one of the best ways of making a lot of weak ties and that can lead to good things in the future for you. And given that AI now makes studying so much easier, you would likely have to spend less time on studying in university. So previously you might have had to spend like I don't know 60 hours a week. Now you can spend like 40 hours a week and you can use the additional time that you saved on studying to be able to spend more time with your network and friends and making these week ties. So I'm going to say this actually goes up in value because more people will be spending more time making week ties and doing other things in preparation for the future. And somewhat similar to networking is that university is one of the best places where you can meet a potential marriage partner in the future if you intend on getting married. Not to say you can't do outside of university, but like usually people just have a much easier time within university. Another pretty important aspect of university is a cloud. Basically a lot of people are quite lazy and they don't want to spend too much time evaluating someone like how smart they are, how hardworking they are and so forth. So usually they use a proxy for that or they use like a shortcut. And that mental shortcut is often university. And if you go to a good university, they assume that you're a hard worker and that you're smart and so forth. And the same thing also happens with being employed as well. If you worked at a really good company, then often people see that favorably if you're applying for another job or just doing anything else because they're taking that mental shortcut. And I kind of use an example here of you can capitalize on the clout of a good university that you went to like these YouTubers have. So Simon Clark went to Oxford to study physics. Ali Abdal studied medicine at Cambridge. And at the beginning of their channels and including my channel, they use the clout or the brand name of the university to kind of give them an initial boost on their channel. And then in Ali's case, he monetized it quite well because his business does like $5 million a year now. And now related to opportunities, something that I said in my comment on this video was that what matters is what else is available at the university you're considering attending? Does your university have a strong alumni network? Will you meet incredibly talented people there in the field you're interested in? Does it offer exchange programs, research, internships, and summer placements? Does it have connections to local startups or companies to help you with work experience? And I think this can be pretty important. For example, at Cambridge University, we did have an exchange program to Japan, which I attended and I really enjoyed. And this was the like website about the program. And other opportunities may include things like connections with local startups because they can give you internships, travel grants. So, we had a travel grant at Cambridge as well. and I got like seven800 pounds, so about like 1,100 1,200 for my exchange program to Japan because I wanted to stay in Japan longer and then also do some kind of research and write a report on the side and then also research grants as well. Basically, there's a lot of information on university websites. So, instead of evaluating a university of which one you want to go to because of the education or because of the content that they're teaching, you should evaluate it based on the opportunities that you might get when you're at that university. And now the next part I want to cover is the alumni network. So this is something that many people overlook but I think the alumni network of many top universities at least can be very powerful especially if they have a global alumni network. So I included a screenshot of the Cambridge and Oxford Tokyo society and I go to these events quite regularly as well and there are a lot of people there who graduated from Cambridge like 30 40 50 years ago and so forth and some of them are now working in like really big companies or like have senior positions and they're just really well connected. So you may want to look at how well established is an alumni network or the university you're going to and how global the alumni network is as well because the likelihood is if you move to a different country then you can find an alumni network or local alumni group for your university and then get integrated into that country quite quickly and get a job and do other things quite easily. So I think that learning about the alumni network, how well established it is, how many countries it's in and so forth for the universities that you're considering going to can be very helpful as well. And the final point is the societies of the university you're planning on going to. Some universities have more societies or better like running societies that are more frequent in terms of events than other universities as well. So for any society that you're interested in, especially if it's related to careers in the future, you

may want to go on their website and see how often they run events as well. Or you just may want to think about starting your own society once you get to that university, too. So basically because you're now saving like 10 20 hours a week because you're using AI to help you study more effectively, you can now devote more time to societies and going to events and then forming those weak ties and learning about opportunities and things you may potentially do in the future and potentially working with people on projects that may lead to like other future good positive outcomes. So as an example, one of the societies at Cambridge is a Cambridge University Algorithmic Trading Society. And this can personally be very helpful if you're planning on going to algorithmic trading in the future. And I remember when I was there the events were quite frequent and they were like quite well established and before going to one of your society's events I never knew about algorithmic trading what it involved and so forth and I learned about it quite quickly all the opportunities in that space and a lot of the famous people and like well connected people quite quickly. So I think societies especially related to careers that you can do in the future are one of the best ways of fasttracking yourself to being able to get opportunities in that career. But yeah, the overall message of the video is that over the coming months and years, AI will make education at universities less relevant because anyone will be able to get a good education no matter what university they're going to. So you have to focus on all these other factors when you're thinking about which university to go to instead of just education itself.