Is University Worth It In the Age of AI?

I've seen more and more videos like this lately of people clearly using AI to pass all their assignments and not actually doing any studying for themselves and had me thinking like what is the point in University these days given how important and widespread AI has become so I think that University isn't just the education itself but it's like a bundle of different things so it's a credentials that you receive it's a courses that you do it's a that you make and the like social aspects of University it's the fact you get to be independent and for some it's to do with the research that you might be involved in and I'm going to go through all of these like give my thoughts on them and hopefully you can decide whether it's worth it for you or not and of course you won't find all the answers here because like that debate is like many hours long itself but hopefully this gives you some guidance so I think probably the biggest reason people apply to university is the fact that it's a credential agency like it gives out degrees and credentials to people in society and the reality is that most people in society are pretty lazy and they don't want to do much thinking for themselves so they use like mental shortcuts to be able to like come to conclusions without them having to think so hard themselves and that's what many employeers do where they basically look at what university you went to and use it as a proxy for whether you're able to do the job that's required or not even though you may have many people who can do the same job but haven't been to University or may not have been to as good of a university so basically University Awards these credentials in return or like after you study that and the reason it's like more credential focused is because if you imagine two cases so like case a someone goes to University they make 100K after graduating graduates often make more than non-graduates and in case b someone doesn't go to university and they make 50k a year instead now let's say hypothetically you did 80% of University and then you dropped out before you completed the last 20% you would have not graduated and you would make you would not make 80% of the difference which would be 90k every year you would make like closer to 50K because it's not actually about the content itself so a possible explanation could be two things it could be the fact that you learn most of what you needed to do in the last 20% Which we all know is not true or is the fact that employeers care more about the fact that you actually graduated than what you actually learned in that University and I think this is especially true given that 50% of people don't do a job in relation to whatever they study that University now where AI comes into this is the fact that many people in University if they're not actually studying for their exams and they're just getting AI to do most of the reasoning and thinking and studying for them in dead then they're going to be less qualified Than People 10 15 years ago and also people will be getting into University more easily and there will be more people who are wanting to go to university because it's seen as being so easy that you can just go there do get AI to do all the work for you and so forth and I think it means that the credential itself of University will slowly diminish over time because people would be like oh graduates from X University 15 20 years ago were stronger or better in quality than graduates nowadays because everyone's who's everyone who's graduating now nowadays has mostly used AI to graduate in some way or what but of course this depends entirely on what you're studying and why you're studying because some degrees at some universities are worth more than other degrees at other universities and by worth I'm talking about like an economic worth of like a computer science degree is like more economically like valuable to society or worth more than like a English or Philosophy degree but I guess like an is probably more like SP spiritually worthy to you internally in some way uh it's pretty hard to evaluate what's worth more so the next part of university is courses and I think it's very unlikely that you will go to your University and learn something that you cannot find on the internet basically like pretty much everything you're learning can be found on the internet in some way so it's like either two values of University come from that one is the fact that you actually learn in like a curriculum and you get guidance and support from like the university itself to help you learn the material whether that's in the form of like Tutors or mentoring or like professors like answering your questions and so forth compared to people who are just learning online so where the value in University used to come from is the fact that you get extra mentorship or like professors can answer your questions or you have Tutors or mentors and so forth you have all this extra structure around what you're learning that will like make your learning more beneficial or it will really help and unless you're doing like really lab heavy work such as like doing a doctor like training to be a doctor or like a chemist or something if you have all the facilities and all the information online then it's much more likely that you will have a better experience learning online thanks to AI nowadays for example Chad upt likely will be explaining things to you much better than your professor is able to and I think in a few months and even a few years it will get like much better than most of the significant or like best teachers out there so I think the final value of University in that sense would probably be the structure that it gives you around courses in the sense like it provides you a structure for like teaching you we're going to learn this and this week this and that week and you can basically like in some cases you don't even have to go to lectures you can just learn it yourself or you can go to lectures and it kind of gives you structure in your own life I know some people are very good at like having discipline to learn something themselves

over an extended period of time and some people may not be as disciplined in that sense but I think given how quickly you now able to learn things and like in a very efficient way thanks to tools like chat gbt maybe it will be less expected of you to know as concretely or like in detail about whatever field for whatever job you're doing because you can kind of learn it on the fly or you can like learn it thanks to the job and the job or company will probably have internal tools that help you master that particular field and probably the percentage of people who are doing things related to what they study at University I think currently it's now 50% it will probably be even higher in the sense that more people will be graduating and doing jobs that are unrelated to what they study at University before I think another pretty big component of university is the research component itself so as an undergraduate you may be able to get research opportunities that you do over the summer or you may want to do a master's and then a PhD and continue going down the university like Academia rout and I think what you will find is that your research is often limited by whether you can get a grant for that particular thing that you want to research or whether you can just get the funding in general in many cases you're not able to research whatever the hell you want and if you are then you're incredibly fortunate in that sense and for the last couple of decades Academia has been experiencing the whole thing of like the replication crisis where it's like half of studies it actually depends on which field you're looking at but like half of studies don't replicate at all and there are like 3 million research papers published every year and if half of them aren't even replicating and many like hundreds of thousands AR even being read because they're just Ching out research for the sake of research then ultimately you may end up in a really good environment where like the research is actually valued you get to research what you want you have the funding and opportunities available or you may end up in a more toxic environment where you're just publishing papers for the sake of publishing papers you're not researching what you want you end up like altering or modifying projects in some way to be able to fit in with whatever grants that your lab or university is applying to in one case I met a guy who using a machine learning PhD at Oxford for a lab and I asked him how the PHD was going and he basically said he doesn't really have anything to do in the sense that the lab that he was doing the PHD form they basically applied to like a grant program which said as part of getting this to grant for your lab you have to accept one machine learning AI related PhD and because a lab wasn't really doing any machine learning AI related stuff anyway they just came up with some clever way of like introducing AI that they didn't actually need for their work and then they had this PhD St come in and then in a couple months the PHD St realize that they weren't actually do anything valuable and the professor just didn't need them and they like supervisor just didn't really care about what they're doing and I think like he was planning on dropping out when I talked to him about this so this entirely comes down to whether or not you're able to research what you want what kind of lab you're researching for and also what kind of field that you're researching in some fields of course will be much better funded and they have like more exploration opportunities whereas other fields may not be quite as well funded but I think going forth like Gemini introduced a researches feature Chad GPT add did a deep research feature which apparently is really good I haven't tried it yet but a lot of people are raving about it and I think that given many AI tools are introducing these research related features it's likely that you'll find many independent researchers or research users who are kind of loosely affiliated with universities who are doing like really groundbreaking research with the help of AI in the sense like AI sort of like helped them unlock various connections and discoveries and so forth so I think there might be a rise in like independent researchers who doing really good work but that also means that there will be a rise in research which is just complete slop because it was intally written by AI as well so I'm not sure if that really good research would end up being lost in the noise or not but of course there's some kinds of research that AI will not be able to do yet at all for example like if you working a lab or you have to do like physical things I don't think AI robotics have gotten to a point where they're able to do the like robotic um like experiments for you so it seems that a lot of research inspired by AI is basically being able to coales and like combine and connect ideas between like thousands or tens of thousands of different papers and then coming up with something new based on that existing research rather than doing you research itself so what this probably means for you is that if you really want to do research then you have to find a way to be complimentary with AI in the future and I think that might make you a better researcher overall than many of the researchers who are much older and may not know how to use AI quite as well but I guess in some research circles where AI is really frown upon or whatever because like some old Professor had a bad experience with it you might actually have to hide the fact that you used AI in some way to be able to make the connections that you did so another big aspect of university is a social aspect and university is a place where many people around country and even around the world will come into one place and like become friends exchange ideas and basically you will find many people here on a similar wavelength to you and many people that you may also disagree with and I think throughout history this has can been an important part of universities themselves in the sense that when you look at many like Independence movements and like political parties and movements throughout history they have usually arised from universities or students because universities and students in those universities have exchanged so many ideas and or like it's a

culmination of or like Boiling Pot of many different ideas so what this meant for me is that I became much less arrogant because I met people who were smarter and just as smart as me and many people who are smart in like very different domains to what I was so it like really humbles you down if you optically arrogant right now and it also just means that you make like really strong and good friendships because many people say like the friends that they've stayed in touch with throughout their adulthood are usually the friends that they had from University it's also a really good place where you can find collaborators for various projects in the future so you could start ACC company and then you can remember like you have a particular University friend who's really good at like I don't know engineering and you need engineering expertise in your like company and then you can just invite them along or you may be on the receiving end of this where you will make friends at University and then many people like you graduate with will go on to do like pretty incredible things in the future and provided you made friends with interesting people during University you may be involved in many of these like interesting opportunities that they're now doing because they invite you as a collaborator or they like give you a reference or various other things and I think that is like much harder to replicate with AI just like the social connections and networks that you get from University itself and I think a final Point worth mentioning is that many people find their life partners and like people they get married to in the future in University itself that doesn't mean they don't find it outside of University but many people do in University and I think in many people's cases or experiences it's much easier during University because you're surrounded by so many more people your age and people who are in a similar wave lump to you and so forth then you are just out in the real world I think I final related aspect of this is that University is the first time many people in their lives are fully independent especially if they're studying away from home and they have to do the laundry themselves they have to cook themselves in some cases they have to just like do all the adult responsibilities themselves and then they have to like navigate how the world works and they have to like apply for opportunities and then they might get rejected and they have to get used to getting rejected from like jobs and internships that they applied for and I think that General University gives you like a chance to have like a deep understanding of the world and just like explore the world in like a safe controlled environment in sense that in University like you often have support networks or like your University advisor or like counselors or and tutoring staff or something that will help you if you have any difficulties or struggles whilst you're trying to like be independent and learn how to be an adult I think a final small aspects is the financial aspect of it really depends on which country you're from like if you go to a country where University is really cheap or free it you may have to evaluate it differently if you go to one West student loans are pretty easy like government wise for example in the UK you don't have to repay your student loans until you make like 25 or 27,000 and then you only pay 9% above whatever you make above their threshold so it's more like a graduate tax and it is like student loans and I think they get cleared after 30 years or so it really depends on which country you're from so I can't really like comment on this but what I can comment on and like firmly believe is that you don't have to go to university to be successful in life there are many cases where people have been successful in life and they haven't gone to University and there are many cases where people Haven being successful in life and they have gone to like a really good University and a quote that I really like on this is school was always a downside protection you have to find the upside all on your own you can't expect that going to University will automatically make you millions or something in the future you have to find those upside or like big opportuni as yourself and you can't rely on University to do that for you sure it may help in some ways because you might meet people who will introduce you to such opportunities and help you get connected to relevant people in the future but it may not necessarily always be the case you can also find those people online or just by doing impressive things and posting about it online so what I have still gone to University in the age of AI for me personally like there was no AI or like large young good models that were popular during my time at University so it's entirely without AI but if I did then I'd probably use like because University is less about the content that you learn and more about the credentials I would focus more on the credential aspects and the network building aspect and then using AI to make like my studying much easier for the other aspects of University it really depends on what you're doing if you're like being a doctor then you probably shouldn't like use AI to pass all your exams and not actually learn medicine because that's dangerous for yourself and for patients in the future but if you're going to be one of the like 50% people who don't do a job related to whatever they study during University youd still want to develop like more useful skills in University like critical thinking and like reasoning and solving hard problems and you may want to use AI to basically help you through all the like random crap that you have to do where you don't really see like any benefit or like fruition or like any useful thing coming from it and then to spend that time that you would have saved by like finding of opportunities like doing internships networking exploring Independence as an adult and yeah generally just relying more on the credential itself because like it's pretty clear in society that people care less about what you studied and the exact nature of it's more about the credential or like the signaling aspect because most people are lazy as I said before and they want to take shortcuts in life and one of those shortcuts is basically looking at where you studied what you studied and then determining how capable you are how smart you are but of course if you're

still not sure I would recommend watching other videos there's a really good video that I have Linked In the description which is like a 2hour debate between well it's not exactly a debate but in between two guys talking about the various aspects of University and also in many cases you can just apply anyway and if you don't like it or you do one year there then you can drop that and just like find another opportunity or a job for example like one of my friends he went to University he was really talented I think he was like six top seven in the year or something and then he did an internship and he really liked the internship and he imagine himself going back to University and the internship offered him like a return job and then instead of completing like the full three years he dropped it after 2 years and then just like worked at the place for the attention fulltime because he just didn't really enjoy University himself or even you can apply for University and then applied deferred so you can have one year where you kind of like do your own thing and like figure out what you want to do in life and then you can either like not go to university or you can then go to university and maybe you can even take a gap here during University but I think in many cases people are more comfortable taking a gap here or dropping out if they know exactly what they're going to do during that time for example like in my friend's case he got a return offer from the company that he did an internship for and he asked if he could use a return offer one year early and then just drop hat instead and they were fine with that they didn't require a degree from him and he probably wouldn't have dropped out if he didn't get a return offer but yeah I think University is worth it in the age of AI mostly because of like how Society is structured and like the sing credentials and stuff but you shouldn't be able to expect to get all the success that you want in life for University alone and you had to find that like upside of success at yourself or on your own and I think there are still many valuable things that you can get from University such as like the social aspects like connections of the future being able to be independent work on projects and also just like be adult for probably the first time in life