In a Spring 2024 Education Next article, I argued that, despite the conventional wisdom that students were all in on artificial intelligence (AI), many in high school and college felt deeply anxious about its impacts on the future jobs available to them and what they should be learning now.
A new survey suggests that parents also have significant concerns around their children’s future job prospects, what they learn in school, and whether they should even go to college.
College Guidance Network, which provides AI-powered expert guidance to parents around colleges and careers (and for which I host live shows for parents on the topic of careers), surveyed 602 parents of U.S. high schoolers that were nationally representative based on household income, student gender, region, and school type.
In an era when the college-going rate of high school graduates has dropped from an all-time high of 70% in 2016 to approximately 62% now, AI appears to be heightening anxieties about the value of college.
According to the survey, two-thirds of parents say AI is impacting their view of the value of college. Thirty-seven percent of parents indicate they are now scrutinizing colleges’ “career-placement outcomes;” 36% say they are looking at a college’s “AI-skills curriculum,” while 35% respond that a “human-skills emphasis” is important to them.
This echoes what I increasingly hear from college leadership: Parents and students demand to see a difference between what they are getting from a college and what they could be “learning from AI.”
Indeed, parents are at least cognizant of backup options to college, with 51% saying that, should the value of a four-year school erode, community college or career-technical school would be desirable, and 20% pointing to apprenticeships. Interestingly enough, parents of children in private and charter schools were six percentage points more likely to be interested in apprenticeships.
Parental concerns aren’t muted, either.
The survey found that 62% of parents discussed “AI and the future of work” in the previous two weeks, with one-third saying they discuss it weekly.
When asked what three words they would use to “capture how [they] feel about the AI-driven future [their] teen will be entering into, the words used most often were concerned, cautious, uncertain, and worried. That tracks with the additional finding that 53% of parents are somewhat or very concerned that AI will narrow their children’s job prospects.
Interestingly, 30% express an optimistic view of AI’s impact on the job market. The parents of children who attend private or charter schools are five percentage points more likely to take that perspective.
This reflects some of the more positive words that parents used to describe an AI-driven future, including optimistic, hopeful, exciting, interesting, and challenging. These were, however, cited less often than the anxiety-tinged words.
Finally, 31% of parents say their teens use ChatGPT-like tools daily. Among those with children in private or charter schools, that number rises to 37%.
This paradox seems central: students are using AI, yet they are anxious. Their parents are, too.
How all this will impact college-going rates is still anyone’s guess, but the anxiety is certainly weighing on the minds of the parents who often foot the college bill.
