Are we Preparing Students for a Future that is Already Changing?

The future of education is often discussed as if there is one obvious challenge sitting in front of us: artificial intelligence.

AI is changing how students learn, how faculty teach, how employers think about skills, and how institutions imagine the future of work. But the more signals I see, the more I think AI is only part of a much larger story.

The bigger question may be this:

Are we preparing people for a future that is changing faster than the institutions designed to prepare them?

Over the past several weeks, I have gathered a cluster of signals around education and work.

Purdue University is moving toward an AI competency graduation requirement, asking students not just to use AI but to understand its limits, critically evaluate machine outputs, and adapt as the technology changes.

At the same time, the future of work is not simply becoming “more technical.” The signals I have been sharing point toward continued demand across technology, the skilled trades, human services, and other fields where technical ability has to coexist with communication, judgment, adaptability, and strong interpersonal skills.

And then there is a bigger structural question. Futurist Bryan Alexander’s idea of Peak Higher Ed asks whether colleges and universities may be moving out of an era built around constant growth. Enrollment pressures, demographic shifts, rising costs, declining public confidence, and AI are all challenging assumptions that shaped higher education for decades.

Taken together, these signals raise a much more interesting question than whether students should simply “learn AI.”

What if education itself has to change?

What if preparing people for the future means combining technical literacy, human skills, vocational pathways, academic learning, and the ability to adapt across a working life?

And what if colleges and universities have to rethink not only what they teach, but what role they are supposed to play in that future?

I unpack each of these signals more fully in my recent videos, including the Purdue AI competency requirement, the future skills students may need for work, and the possibility that higher education is entering a period of reinvention.

If you want the fuller context behind these signals, go watch the videos and then come back to this question:

If the institutions, technologies, occupations, and skills are all changing at the same time, what exactly are we preparing students for?

What this means for social work education

Social work should be paying close attention. Our profession sits directly at the intersection of many of these changes.

Technology will increasingly shape documentation, assessment, organizational decision-making, education, and service delivery. Social work students will need some level of technological competence.

At the same time, many of the capabilities at the heart of social work may become even more important: ethical judgment, critical thinking, communication, relationship-building, contextual understanding, and the ability to navigate complex human systems.

But perhaps the larger question is this:

Are we preparing social work students for the profession as it exists today, or for the different versions of social work that could emerge over the next decade?

Those are not necessarily the same thing.

Watching the signals together

This is why I find signal scanning useful.

A single signal does not tell us the future.

A university adopting an AI competency requirement does not tell us where education is headed. A jobs report does not tell us exactly what work will look like in 2035. And the possibility that higher education has peaked does not mean universities are destined to decline.

Signals are not predictions.

They are early signs that something may be changing.

Their value often becomes clearer when we put them beside one another.

And when I put these signals together, I keep coming back to one question:

Are our educational institutions prepared to change as quickly as the future they are supposed to prepare students for?