My series on WYPR continues here.

As parents, we want our children to be happy after college, just not in our basement. Given the cost, it is reasonable to expect one benefit of college to be a better job—and college graduates earn, on average, $1M more over a lifetime over those with no college education. 

But technology is creating new jobs and eliminating old ones. No college can give you all of the content that you will need in 10 years, because a lot of it has not yet been discovered. The future is unknown. But it will involve technology.

If you want to be prepared for the future job market, focus on the places where computers do less well. You will still need to be able to interface with computers and understand data analytics, but the future of work is about being complimentary to technology.

So an modern education should help you ask better questions. Computers will increasing be able to answer our questions faster, but thinking of new and more creative questions to ask is something humans are likely to be better at for a very long time. It is our ability to leap into the unknown that provides the advantage.

Technology is also changing the nature of work. Artificial intelligence might make your job obsolete, but might also make work obsolete. Here again, determining not only what CAN be done, but what SHOULD be done, and what is worth doing—these will remain fundamentally human decisions. Education should also provide the tools to create meaning in life. Helping students understand who they can be and not just what they do is an essential part of college.