The future workforce is being prepared for jobs that artificial intelligence is already beginning to reshape. The students entering the workplace over the next several years will need to know how to use AI, but they will also need to think independently, question its output, and contribute value beyond what the technology can produce. This creates a significant challenge for colleges. Teaching students how to use AI tools is only one part of preparing them for work. Colleges must also reconsider what they teach, how students demonstrate what they have learned, which experiences build career readiness, and what employers will expect from new graduates.
An EDUCAUSE analysis argues that AI is exposing weaknesses in higher education’s approach to assessment, curriculum, and institutional strategy. It also warns that preparing students for specific jobs may no longer be sufficient when the nature of those jobs is changing so quickly.
How colleges respond will affect more than their students. It will shape the capabilities, expectations, and readiness of the future workforce that employers will soon be hiring and leaders will soon be managing. To understand how that preparation is changing, I asked higher education leaders: How is AI changing the way colleges prepare students for the future workplace?
How Colleges Are Preparing the Future Workforce
Dr. Julie Schornack, President of Marshall B. Ketchum University: AI is not only changing what students learn but how they learn. This will require updates on both curricula and content delivery. Exposure to how AI can assist in data analysis and research pursuits must also be addressed. Finally, discussions of the ethics and cautions concerning AI should be an essential part of the education. It is both an exciting time and a glimpse into uncharted waters that will require our ongoing and constant attention and flexibility.
Erin Nelson, Associate Dean for Graduate Professional Programs at the University of Iowa’s Tippie College of Business: AI is changing both what we teach and how students learn. AI is pushing colleges to be more intentional about the capabilities graduates need in the workplace and to create more opportunities for students to develop and practice those skills. Applied and experiential learning are becoming increasingly important as students work through complex problems, think critically, collaborate, communicate, and exercise sound judgment. We’re also rethinking how we assess learning. Students need opportunities to use AI to solve real business problems, critically evaluate its outputs, and demonstrate what they know and can do independently. They need to defend their recommendations, respond to challenging questions, reconsider assumptions, and make decisions when there isn’t a clear answer. AI is also forcing higher education to be more explicit about the value of a college education. We need to prepare graduates who can combine technological capabilities with their distinctly human skills to make better decisions, lead effectively, and create meaningful impact.
Casey Evans, interim dean of the Kogod School of Business at American University: AI is changing how colleges prepare students for the workplace by requiring schools to rethink what career readiness looks like. Recent findings from a Kogod study reveal the percentage of students who said employers asked about their AI skills during the hiring process increased from 11.6% in 2024 to 42.6% in 2026, a 285% increase in just two years. On top of that, data also shows that alongside AI skills, human skills like communication and adaptability also remain a top priority for employers. Colleges, then, must put a greater emphasis on helping students develop AI fluency alongside the human skills needed to apply it effectively, rather than teaching each separately as singular disciplines. When AI education is paired with a strong knowledge base, collaboration skills, and critical thinking, students will enter the workforce positioned for optimal marketability, adaptability, and job readiness in a transforming market that increasingly expects AI mastery and top-notch professionalism.
Joe Klenk, Associate Vice President of Marketing & Development of Pennsylvania Institute of Technology: AI is changing what it means to be prepared for the workplace. Colleges need to help students use these tools effectively while developing the judgment to question results, recognize errors, and know when human expertise is essential. That means giving students opportunities to use AI in assignments connected to their fields, with clear expectations around accuracy, privacy, and responsible use. Students should be able to explain their decisions and demonstrate that they understand the work behind an AI-generated answer. Communication, critical thinking, and hands-on skills remain essential, especially in fields where decisions directly affect other people. Colleges also need to stay in conversation with employers as expectations change. Our responsibility is to prepare graduates who can adapt, keep learning, and use new tools thoughtfully throughout their careers.
Jenny Darroch, Dean of the Farmer School of Business at Miami University: In the past, we could focus on imparting knowledge to students, but AI has made knowledge more accessible, and so we find ourselves asking what’s next. We have expanded our thinking in two ways. First, we need to be sure students can understand context to exercise sound judgment as they critically evaluate AI-generated output. This has meant over-indexing on experiential learning to provide students multiple opportunities to develop more practical experience as they solve real problems for industry partners. Second, we see our role now is more focused on developing people. We are moving beyond what graduates know to how they work in teams, how they lead, and how they create value. That is why we have shifted our thinking past career preparation to career acceleration. Rather than focusing on the first job, how do we develop people as future leaders.
Michael Schneider, President of McPherson College: We’ve seen this before during the internet boom. However, there is a significant difference this time: students will be learning how to use AI at a similar pace as the colleges themselves. In some cases, students will be adapting quicker than colleges. Colleges will naturally be deliberate and slower adopters of AI technologies, and I think that is appropriate. AI is not something colleges should rush to embrace without understanding its implications. Rather, institutions should move at a pace that allows them to thoughtfully integrate it across campus, beginning with basic policies and the functions where it can provide the greatest benefit. AI will quickly become a foundational competency, creating divides across campus between champions and critics.
Patrick Hopkins, Dean of the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University: LLMs evolve quickly, and we’re training our students to navigate this continuous change. They must be lifelong learners, they must stay model-agnostic, and they must understand the fundamentals and limitations of these models. Today’s workforce requires professionals to continuously demonstrate the unique value they bring to organizations and projects, and relying on AI to handle core cognitive work erodes the very skills required to demonstrate that value. We therefore encourage students to use AI to magnify their work, while critiquing, verifying, and pushing back against it on an ongoing basis. To protect and sharpen the human capabilities that complement AI, we’ve also been doubling down on experiential learning, focusing on ambiguous problem solving, strategic questioning, team dynamics and collaboration, high-stakes communication, and ethics. We tailor AI integration to a student’s maturity level, introducing deeper, more complex applications as students advance. We also protect certain early-stage assignments to ensure students build baseline competencies independently before using these tools.
Kevin Krebs, Founder of HelloCollege: Colleges are adjusting to prepare students not just to use AI tools, but to question their output, apply their own judgment, and take responsibility for the work they produce. Colleges have realized they can’t bury their heads in the sand and ignore AI. That’s like telling students they can’t use the internet and have to go back to analog. But they also can’t use AI for recruitment, admissions, and operations while sending students mixed messages about whether they can use it. Clear, consistent expectations are part of teaching responsible use. In the classroom, that means using AI to help students work through difficult concepts while keeping in-class writing and independent assessments. Students need to show what they can do both with these tools and without them. It also means making AI literacy part of career preparation from freshman year, alongside communication, critical thinking, and problem-solving. The goal isn’t simply to teach students how to get an answer from AI. It’s to prepare them to contribute in a workplace where AI is available.
Dr. Tonjua Williams, President of St. Petersburg College: AI is changing how work gets done. We are preparing [students] for careers that will change in ways we cannot fully anticipate. That means giving them opportunities to solve problems, work with others, and apply what they learn. Internships, hands-on experiences, and strong relationships with employers help students see what is expected of them and build confidence in what they can do.
Dr. James Michael Burkett, President of U.S. operations of Northbridge University: I see AI more as impacting the way that people work and the types of work they do, versus just completely displacing whole occupations. So the goal here is to take input from employers and industry professionals, through advisory boards and other mechanisms, to stay ahead of the curve and ensure the skills and tools we’re training students in are going to be what they’re actually using in the workplace. That can be difficult, because you have this really fast-evolving technology. And the way higher education has traditionally operated makes it more difficult. Colleges need to focus on what’s tangible and real rather than what’s theoretical. We want to ensure we’re giving students practical job skills they’ll use in the workplace. Typically, academia is very slow to adapt and evolve. Having that ability to pivot and adjust more quickly in times like this, times of fast change, is important.
Pratham Mittal, Founder of Tetr College of Business: AI is changing the way we think about education. When information is readily available, and AI can take on many routine tasks, simply knowing things is no longer enough. What matters is whether you can use that knowledge to solve problems, make decisions, and build something meaningful. Colleges need to teach students how to work with AI, not just understand how it works. They should know how to use it to research, test ideas, and work more efficiently, but also when to question its answers and rely on their own judgement. That becomes particularly important when dealing with real-world problems, where there is rarely a single right answer. This is why learning by doing matters. When students build businesses, speak to customers and test their ideas in the real world, they learn things that cannot be taught through theory alone. We cannot predict exactly what the workplace will look like five or ten years from now. But we can prepare students to be curious, adaptable, and capable of creating opportunities for themselves, rather than simply waiting for opportunities to come their way.
Shai Reshef, President of University of the People: There are numerous ways in which AI is altering the way colleges prepare students for the workplace. When delivered responsibly into curriculum design, AI can act as personal tutors and intellectual sounding boards, training students to ask the right questions, refine arguments, and evaluate complex datasets. The key lies in pedagogy: we must teach students to harness the power of AI as an analytical aid rather than rely on it as a crutch or shortcut. They can apply such skills and tactics later on in their respective careers, using AI to aid them in data research or pinpointing industry trends to apply to their workload and analogic output. Artificial intelligence in higher education is not the threat to academic integrity everyone claims; it is a powerful intellectual multiplier. Far from replacing human capabilities, AI elevates learners by shifting the educational paradigm from memorization to analysis, problem-solving, and synthesis.
Frequently Asked Questions About the Future Workforce
How is AI changing the future workforce?
AI is changing the future workforce by altering job responsibilities, workplace practices, and the skills employers value. Graduates will need to know how to use AI while also bringing critical thinking, communication, creativity, adaptability, and professional responsibility to their work.
How are colleges preparing the future workforce for AI?
Colleges are preparing the future workforce by incorporating AI into academic programs, reconsidering traditional assignments, expanding applied learning, and teaching students how to evaluate and responsibly use AI-generated information.
What AI skills will the future workforce need?
The future workforce will need to know how to use AI tools, write effective instructions, evaluate output, identify errors and bias, protect sensitive information, and determine when human involvement is necessary. Students will also need the capabilities required to stay relevant in the age of AI, including critical thinking, communication, adaptability, and responsible AI use.
What human skills will the future workforce need?
The future workforce will need communication, collaboration, critical thinking, creativity, ethical reasoning, adaptability, leadership, and relationship-building skills. These abilities become more valuable when technology can perform more routine work.
Is AI literacy essential for the future workforce?
AI literacy will be increasingly important for the future workforce because artificial intelligence is becoming part of work across many professions. AI literacy includes understanding what the technology can do, where it can fail, and how to use it responsibly. Learning how to stay relevant in the age of AI will require combining that technological fluency with strong professional knowledge and independent thinking.
How is AI changing what colleges teach the future workforce?
AI is prompting colleges to place greater emphasis on technological fluency, applied problem-solving, continuous learning, and responsible decision-making. Preparing the future workforce also requires colleges to integrate AI into disciplines beyond computer science.
How is AI changing how colleges assess the future workforce?
AI is making it harder to determine what students know based solely on traditional written assignments. Colleges may need to use more presentations, applied projects, simulations, oral examinations, and assignments that require students to explain their reasoning.
How should colleges prepare the future workforce for changing jobs?
Colleges should prepare the future workforce to adapt rather than training students only for narrowly defined roles. Students need opportunities to solve unfamiliar problems, acquire new skills, work across disciplines, and continue learning after graduation. Colleges must cultivate continuous learning because long-term professional growth will increasingly depend on the ability to acquire new skills as work changes.
How will AI affect entry-level members of the future workforce?
AI may perform some tasks traditionally assigned to entry-level employees. Members of the future workforce may therefore be expected to contribute higher-level thinking earlier in their careers, even though they still need opportunities to learn through experience.
What should employers expect from the future workforce?
Employers should expect the future workforce to arrive with greater exposure to AI but varying levels of practical experience and professional readiness. New graduates may understand the technology while still needing support in applying it responsibly within an organization.
What should employers teach the future workforce about AI?
Employers should teach the future workforce how their organizations use AI, which tools are approved, how sensitive information must be protected, how output should be evaluated, and which decisions require human oversight.
How can internships better prepare the future workforce?
Internships can prepare the future workforce by giving students opportunities to use AI in real professional settings. Students can learn how organizations evaluate AI-generated work, manage risks, protect confidential information, and combine technology with human decision-making.
How should career services prepare the future workforce?
Career services should help the future workforce understand how AI is changing job searches, interviews, résumés, career paths, and employer expectations. Advisers can also teach students to use AI without misrepresenting their qualifications or experiences.
How can colleges keep their preparation of the future workforce current?
Colleges can keep their preparation of the future workforce current by communicating with employers, reviewing curricula regularly, supporting faculty development, and monitoring changes in entry-level work. They should emphasize durable capabilities rather than individual tools that may quickly become outdated.
What role should employers play in developing the future workforce?
Employers should give the future workforce opportunities to apply knowledge, receive feedback, learn from experienced colleagues, and take on progressively greater responsibility. Career preparation must continue after graduates enter the workplace.
How can colleges determine whether the future workforce is ready?
Colleges can evaluate whether members of the future workforce can use AI responsibly, explain their reasoning, apply their knowledge, solve unfamiliar problems, communicate effectively, and adapt to new tools. Employer feedback and graduate outcomes can provide additional evidence.
