The Unexpected Ally
The breathless arrival of generative artificial intelligence has sent a ripple of anxiety through every corner of society, and higher education is no exception. For leaders of small liberal arts colleges (LACs), the questions AI poses can feel particularly acute. When a technology appears capable of writing essays, composing music, and analyzing data in seconds, what becomes of an educational tradition rooted in deep reading, deliberative writing, and the cultivation of the human mind?
The prevailing fear is one of obsolescence. The more optimistic view sees a tool for efficiency. Both perspectives, however, miss the fundamental point. The AI revolution is not a threat to be mitigated or a simple tool to be adopted; it is a catalyst that will make the core mission of a liberal arts education more vital than ever before.
My own most profound encounter with this new reality didn't come from a simple chat interface. It came while using Google's Firebase to build a simple application. Having spent the better part of a year learning basic coding—reaching a level I imagined was typical for a second or third-year undergraduate computer science student—I was wholly unprepared for the accuracy and scope of what I experienced. In a matter of seconds, the AI created whole file directories that I could hardly understand. It was one of the first times where the true fear of obsolescence washed over me. At that moment, I could vividly imagine the sense of despair a student might feel in the face of this technology: no matter how hard I work at this craft, I will never be as good as AI.
Yet, there was exhilaration and excitement in this moment as well. What I imagined as a little app I could build for my kids to make flashcards on their phones suddenly sprang to life. It didn't quite work at first; I had to wrestle with it, to cajole the AI. I had to use all the teaching tactics and tricks I’ve learned in the classroom to pry a new insight out of a student and demand it explain that insight to me clearly. And together, after a few hours, we had a true working prototype. It was simple and elegant—and it was an accomplishment I never imagined I would be able to achieve myself. This, to me, is what exemplifies the AI catalyst. It is in this dynamic space between fear and accomplishment, between human intention and machine capability, that the future of learning and work resides.
This is not a call for a defensive crouch, protecting what we’ve always done.
It is a call to lead.
The future does not belong to those who can simply use AI. It belongs to those who can collaborate with it, guide it, and humanize its impact. By moving beyond seeing AI as a mere instrument and recasting it as a new kind of partner in the learning process, liberal arts colleges can prepare graduates to do more than just find a place in an evolving workforce—they can prepare them to build it.
The New Reality: An AI-Augmented Workforce
To understand the opportunity, we must first understand the reality of the evolving workforce. The change is not speculative; it is already here. By late 2024, nearly a third of all U.S. workers were already using generative AI on the job. The reason for this seems clear: it allows us to complete tasks more efficiently. Shakked Noy and Whitney Zhang as early as March of 2023, found that exposure to an LLM during occupation-specific writing tasks significantly increased both efficiency (0.8 SDs) and output quality (0.4 SDs). In the workforce, these gains in efficiency are not necessarily part of a simple story of replacement. While some roles will be displaced, the World Economic Forum (WEF) projects a net gain of 78 million jobs globally by 2030, with AI creating new positions as it transforms existing ones.
It comes as no surprise, then, that AI is increasingly not just an occasional gadget we gawk at as something weirdly monstrous but wondrous, occasionally helpful but deceptively sinister. Instead, it is quickly becoming an integrated part of our daily workflows and our daily lives. Its familiarity and integration has led to a seemingly inevitable story. The nature of work is being redefined. AI is automating routine, repetitive tasks. Unshackled, a human worker can now focus on more complex, strategic, and creative responsibilities.
I’m not sure anyone in higher education is so naive as to believe this techno-utopian vision, even as the inevitability of generative AI’s creep into our lives can be felt existentially. And yet, beneath the competing narratives of utopia and dystopia, a more pragmatic truth is emerging from what employers are actually asking for: a renewed demand for uniquely human intelligence. And, we might go a step further. The distinctively human intelligence these employers are desperate to maintain is, I would suggest, exactly the kind of human intelligence that makes us uncomfortable in the face of AI. It is the kind of intuitional human intelligence that generates our skepticism in the face of that techno-utopian vision—the intellectual restlessness that refuses to accept a simple story when one cultivates the habits of mind associated with the liberal arts. It is the existential feeling that forces us to wrestle with the meaning of our labor as that labor evolves before our eyes.
In this new landscape, it is tempting to return to tried and true frameworks for understanding what constitutes value in the workforce. Take for instance the "T-shaped professional". This model describes an individual with deep knowledge in a specific discipline (the vertical bar of the “T”) complemented by a broad set of transferable skills (the horizontal bar). It is tempting to take a well-established framework like this one and associate those broad, transferable skills with the distinctive forms of human intelligence that will be freed and broadened even more as the drudgery of detailed tasks in the vertical bar can be accessed instantly through AI. Again, though, there is something about this story that leaves us intellectually restless. But if AI is not just augmenting but potentially dissolving the very nature of deep, specialized expertise in the vertical bar, can a model built on that distinction truly guide us, or does it merely repackage an old solution for a problem of a completely different order?
Not everything has been upended, though. Skills like critical thinking, analysis, and active learning (classic transferable skills) are rapidly increasing in importance in the age of AI. One could argue this just reflects a lack of imagination about the true skills an AI integrated workforce will need, but a consensus seems to be emerging that in the AI era intellectual workers will have a dual need for (1) foundational AI literacy and (2) a strengthened capacity in the very human-centric competencies that AI cannot replicate.
Thinking through the essential skills for AI Integration in an Organization
These are not mere "soft skills"; they are the enduring habits of mind that a liberal arts education is uniquely positioned to cultivate:
Computational and Logical Thinking: This goes beyond coding; it's the ability to understand the structure of arguments, the logic of systems, and the procedural nature of algorithms, allowing one to think with and through technology.
Analytical Reasoning: The ability to deconstruct problems, interpret data, and evaluate evidence—whether generated by humans or machines—remains a cornerstone of intellectual work.
Ethical Fortitude: More than just reasoning, this is the developed capacity and courage to guide technological development, to advocate for human-centered values, and to take responsibility for the societal impact of AI.
Collaborative Rhetoric: The classical art of persuasion, reimagined for an era of human-AI teams. It's the skill of clearly articulating complex ideas, fostering shared understanding, and effectively communicating with both human and machine collaborators.
Wonder and Intellectual Agility: A cultivated sense of curiosity and intellectual humility that drives lifelong learning and adaptation. It is the engine of discovery that asks "what if?" and "why?" in a world where AI can only answer "what is?".
Aesthetic Creativity: The ability to generate works of genuine originality, emotional depth, and beauty, synthesizing disparate ideas into something truly new in a way that AI can only mimic.
Perhaps this is the new shape of the professional: not a T, but something more fluid and integrated, where these habits of mind are not merely 'transferable' but are the very core from which all specialized work flows.
That is a profound opportunity, because these types of sought-after competencies are the very heart of a liberal arts education. The challenge is not to abandon our mission, but to adapt it, making the connection between our timeless values and the contemporary demands of the workforce explicit and powerful. This has been the task of the liberal arts college in the face of all sorts of emerging technologies; it is a task that remains constant as we enter the age of AI.
If this article sparked an idea or clarified a challenge, let's build on that momentum.
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The Liberal Arts Response: From Robot-Proof to AI-Leading
The rest of the essay explores the response needed by Liberal Arts colleges in this important moment.
