The specialized degree is dead.
Most people just don’t know it yet.
Young people will no longer need specialized degrees in marketing, finance, or accounting etc, because the future will belong to people who can solve problems across any domain using AI as leverage.
I’m watching this play out with my Gen Z employee @halstonvalencia. We’re using systems like @claudeai to 10x our output across marketing, research synthesis, strategic planning, workflow automation, and data analysis.
We’re constantly learning, experimenting, and iterating because problem solving skills compound with AI, and the gap between those who adapt and those who don’t is widening FAST.
Universities are selling credentials for a world that no longer exists.
AI generalists who can think critically and solve problems across domains are the future.
Login to reply
Replies (1)
While I don't believe that LLMs will soon yield better results than being the first working implementation of the Library of Babel / Bibliotheca Universalis by Conrad Gessner's¹ I agree in the broad sense and suggest the book Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World by David Epstein substantially on the same topic.
In my view, the first cycle of university (Bachelor's in the US, speaking of the EU system I'm familiar with) should be a vocational course. As we evolve, we need greater knowledge to work effectively, and LLMs aren't the ones providing it, at most they can aid learning. So the theory behind the reasoning which the machine then applies is essential and largely missing; "shadowing someone for a while" isn't enough to become modern a worker.
A couple of years in the second cycle (Master's in the US) should serve as a gymnasium for the PhD, which ought to be the only true degree, allowing for both a career as a pure researcher and an operational one.
Today, too many people are filled with doxa (notions) but largely lack gnosis (the ability to rationally employ that doxa). They are trained like meat-bots to be put on an assembly line, modern stereotypical Fordian workers² at every level, whereas in Ford's time, this was only the lowest stratum of the population.
¹
² 
Bibliotheca universalis - Wikipedia
The Atlantic
College-Educated Professionals Are Capitalism’s Useful Idiots
How I got co-opted into helping the rich prevail at the expense of everybody else