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The Print
12 hours ago
- Business
- The Print
Knowledge is no longer scarce. Rise of AI must push universities to rethink what they offer
The model worked because the supply curve for high-quality information sat far to the left, meaning knowledge was scarce and the price – tuition and wage premiums – stayed high. That process did two things: it gave you access to knowledge that was hard to find elsewhere, and it signalled to employers you had invested time and effort to master that knowledge. For a long time, universities worked off a simple idea: knowledge was scarce. You paid for tuition, showed up to lectures, completed assignments and eventually earned a credential. Now the curve has shifted right, as the graph below illustrates. When supply moves right – that is, something becomes more accessible – the new intersection with demand sits lower on the price axis. This is why tuition premiums and graduate wage advantages are now under pressure. According to global consultancy McKinsey, generative AI could add between US$2.6 trillion and $4.4 trillion in annual global productivity. Why? Because AI drives the marginal cost of producing and organising information toward zero. Large language models no longer just retrieve facts; they explain, translate, summarise and draft almost instantly. When supply explodes like that, basic economics says price falls. The 'knowledge premium' universities have long sold is deflating as a result. Employers have already made their move Markets react faster than curriculums. Since ChatGPT launched, entry-level job listings in the United Kingdom have fallen by about a third. In the United States, several states are removing degree requirements from public-sector roles. In Maryland, for instance, the share of state-government job ads requiring a degree slid from roughly 68% to 53% between 2022 and 2024. In economic terms, employers are repricing labour because AI is now a substitute for many routine, codifiable tasks that graduates once performed. If a chatbot can complete the work at near-zero marginal cost, the wage premium paid to a junior analyst shrinks. But the value of knowledge is not falling at the same speed everywhere. Economists such as David Autor and Daron Acemoglu point out that technology substitutes for some tasks while complementing others: codifiable knowledge – structured, rule-based material such as tax codes or contract templates – faces rapid substitution by AI tacit knowledge – contextual skills such as leading a team through conflict – acts as a complement, so its value can even rise. Data backs this up. Labour market analytics company Lightcast notes that one-third of the skills employers want have changed between 2021 and 2024. The American Enterprise Institute warns that mid-level knowledge workers, whose jobs depend on repeatable expertise, are most at risk of wage pressure. So yes, baseline knowledge still matters. You need it to prompt AI, judge its output and make good decisions. But the equilibrium wage premium – meaning the extra pay employers offer once supply and demand for that knowledge settle – is sliding down the demand curve fast. What's scarce now? Herbert Simon, the Nobel Prize–winning economist and cognitive scientist, put it neatly decades ago: 'A wealth of information creates a poverty of attention.' When facts become cheap and plentiful, our limited capacity to filter, judge and apply them turns into the real bottleneck. That is why scarce resources shift from information itself to what machines still struggle to copy: focused attention, sound judgement, strong ethics, creativity and collaboration. I group these human complements under what I call the C.R.E.A.T.E.R. framework: critical thinking – asking smart questions and spotting weak arguments resilience and adaptability – staying steady when everything changes emotional intelligence – understanding people and leading with empathy accountability and ethics – taking responsibility for difficult calls teamwork and collaboration – working well with people who think differently entrepreneurial creativity – seeing gaps and building new solutions reflection and lifelong learning – staying curious and ready to grow. These capabilities are the genuine scarcity in today's market. They are complements to AI, not substitutes, which is why their wage returns hold or climb. What universities can do right now 1. Audit courses: if ChatGPT can already score highly on an exam, the marginal value of teaching that content is near zero. Pivot the assessment toward judgement and synthesis. 2. Reinvest in the learning experience: push resources into coached projects, messy real-world simulations, and ethical decision labs where AI is a tool, not the performer. 3. Credential what matters: create micro-credentials for skills such as collaboration, initiative and ethical reasoning. These signal AI complements, not substitutes, and employers notice. 4. Work with industry but keep it collaborative: invite employers to co-design assessments, not dictate them. A good partnership works like a design studio rather than a boardroom order sheet. Academics bring teaching expertise and rigour, employers supply real-world use cases, and students help test and refine the ideas. Universities can no longer rely on scarcity setting the price for the curated and credentialed form of information that used to be hard to obtain. The comparative advantage now lies in cultivating human skills that act as complements to AI. If universities do not adapt, the market – students and employers alike – will move on without them. The opportunity is clear. Shift the product from content delivery to judgement formation. Teach students how to think with, not against, intelligent machines. Because the old model, the one that priced knowledge as a scarce good, is already slipping below its economic break-even point. Patrick Dodd, Professional Teaching Fellow, Business School, University of Auckland, Waipapa Taumata Rau This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Yahoo
4 days ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
News Analysis: Trump's 'force of personality' hasn't delivered on key foreign policy goals
When President Trump returned to the White House in January, he promised to deliver big foreign policy wins in record time. He said he would halt Russia's war against Ukraine in 24 hours or less, end Israel's war in Gaza nearly as quickly and force Iran to end to its nuclear program. He said he'd persuade Canada to become the 51st state, take Greenland from Denmark and negotiate 90 trade deals in 90 days. 'The president believes that his force of personality … can bend people to do things," his special envoy-for-everything, Steve Witkoff, explained in May in a Breitbart interview. Six months later, none of those ambitious goals have been reached. Ukraine and Gaza are still at war. Israel and the United States bombed Iran's nuclear facilities, but it's not clear whether they ended the country's atomic program once and for all. Canada and Denmark haven't surrendered any territory. And instead of trade deals, Trump is mostly slapping tariffs on other countries, to the distress of U.S. stock markets. It turned out that force of personality couldn't solve every problem. 'He overestimated his power and underestimated the ability of others to push back,' said Kori Schake, director of foreign policy at the conservative American Enterprise Institute. 'He often acts as if we're the only people with leverage, strength or the ability to take action. We're not.' Read more: Inside Trump's ICE expansion: Can he really hire 10,000 new agents? The president has notched important achievements. He won a commitment from other members of NATO to increase their defense spending to 5% of gross domestic product. The attack on Iran appears to have set Tehran's nuclear project back for years, even if it didn't end it. And Trump — or more precisely, his aides — helped broker ceasefires between India and Pakistan and between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo. But none of those measured up to the goals Trump initially set for himself — much less qualified for the Nobel Peace Prize he has publicly yearned for. 'I won't get a Nobel Peace Prize for this,' he grumbled when the Rwanda-Congo agreement was signed. The most striking example of unfulfilled expectations has come in Ukraine, the grinding conflict Trump claimed he could end even before his inauguration. For months, Trump sounded certain that his warm relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin would produce a deal that would stop the fighting, award Russia most of the territory its troops have seized and end U.S. economic sanctions on Moscow. 'I believe he wants peace,' Trump said of Putin in February. 'I trust him on this subject.' But to Trump's surprise, Putin wasn't satisfied with his proposal. The Russian leader continued bombing Ukrainian cities even after Trump publicly implored him to halt via social media ('Vladimir, STOP!'). Critics charged that Putin was playing Trump for a fool. The president bristled: "Nobody's playing me." But as early as April, he admitted to doubts about Putin's good faith. 'It makes me think that maybe he doesn't want to stop the war, he's just tapping me along," he said. 'I speak to him a lot about getting this thing done, and I always hang up and say, 'Well, that was a nice phone call,' and then missiles are launched into Kyiv or some other city,' Trump complained last week. 'After that happens three or four times, you say the talk doesn't mean anything." The president also came under pressure from Republican hawks in Congress who warned privately that if Ukraine collapsed, Trump would be blamed the way his predecessor, President Biden, was blamed for the fall of Afghanistan in 2022. So last week, Trump changed course and announced that he will resume supplying U.S.-made missiles to Ukraine — but by selling them to European countries instead of giving them to Kyiv as Biden had. Trump also gave Putin 50 days to accept a ceasefire and threatened to impose 'secondary tariffs' on countries that buy oil from Russia if he does not comply. He said he still hopes Putin will come around. 'I'm not done with him, but I'm disappointed in him,' he said in a BBC interview. It still isn't clear how many missiles Ukraine will get and whether they will include long-range weapons that can strike targets deep inside Russia. A White House official said those details are still being worked out. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov sounded unimpressed by the U.S. actions. 'I have no doubt that we will cope,' he said. Foreign policy experts warned that the secondary tariffs Trump proposed could prove impractical. Russia's two biggest oil customers are China and India; Trump is trying to negotiate major trade agreements with both. Meanwhile, Trump has dispatched Witkoff back to the Middle East to try to arrange a ceasefire in Gaza and reopen nuclear talks with Iran — the goals he began with six months ago. Despite his mercurial style, Trump's approach to all these foreign crises reflects basic premises that have remained constant for a decade, foreign policy experts said. 'There is a Trump Doctrine, and it has three basic principles,' Schake said. 'Alliances are a burden. Trade exports American jobs. Immigrants steal American jobs.' Robert Kagan, a former Republican aide now at the Brookings Institution, added one more guiding principle: 'He favors autocrats over democrats.' Trump has a soft spot for foreign strongmen like Putin and China's Xi Jinping, and has abandoned the long-standing U.S. policy of fostering democracy abroad, Kagan noted. Read more: Trump threatens Russia with tariffs and boosts U.S. weapons for Ukraine The problem, Schake said, is that those principles 'impede Trump's ability to get things done around the world, and he doesn't seem to realize it. 'The international order we built after World War II made American power stronger and more effective,' she said. 'Trump and his administration seem bent on presiding over the destruction of that international order.' Moreover, Kagan argued, Trump's frenetic imposition of punitive tariffs on other countries comes with serious costs. 'Tariffs are a form of economic warfare,' he said. 'Trump is creating enemies for the United States all over the world. ... I don't think you can have a successful foreign policy if everyone in the world mistrusts you.' Not surprisingly, Trump and his aides don't agree. 'It cannot be overstated how successful the first six months of this administration have been,' White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said last week. 'With President Trump as commander in chief, the world is a much safer place.' That claim will take years to test. Get the L.A. Times Politics newsletter. Deeply reported insights into legislation, politics and policy from Sacramento, Washington and beyond, in your inbox twice per week. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
Los Angeles Times
4 days ago
- Business
- Los Angeles Times
News Analysis: Trump's ‘force of personality' hasn't delivered on key foreign policy goals
WASHINGTON — When President Trump returned to the White House in January, he promised to deliver big foreign policy wins in record time. He said he would halt Russia's war against Ukraine in 24 hours or less, end Israel's war in Gaza nearly as quickly and force Iran to end to its nuclear program. He said he'd persuade Canada to become the 51st state, take Greenland from Denmark and negotiate 90 trade deals in 90 days. 'The president believes that his force of personality … can bend people to do things,' his special envoy-for-everything, Steve Witkoff, explained in May in a Breitbart interview. Six months later, none of those ambitious goals have been reached. Ukraine and Gaza are still at war. Israel and the United States bombed Iran's nuclear facilities, but it's not clear whether they ended the country's atomic program once and for all. Canada and Denmark haven't surrendered any territory. And instead of trade deals, Trump is mostly slapping tariffs on other countries, to the distress of U.S. stock markets. It turned out that force of personality couldn't solve every problem. 'He overestimated his power and underestimated the ability of others to push back,' said Kori Schake, director of foreign policy at the conservative American Enterprise Institute. 'He often acts as if we're the only people with leverage, strength or the ability to take action. We're not.' The president has notched important achievements. He won a commitment from other members of NATO to increase their defense spending to 5% of gross domestic product. The attack on Iran appears to have set Tehran's nuclear project back for years, even if it didn't end it. And Trump — or more precisely, his aides — helped broker ceasefires between India and Pakistan and between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo. But none of those measured up to the goals Trump initially set for himself — much less qualified for the Nobel Peace Prize he has publicly yearned for. 'I won't get a Nobel Peace Prize for this,' he grumbled when the Rwanda-Congo agreement was signed. The most striking example of unfulfilled expectations has come in Ukraine, the grinding conflict Trump claimed he could end even before his inauguration. For months, Trump sounded certain that his warm relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin would produce a deal that would stop the fighting, award Russia most of the territory its troops have seized and end U.S. economic sanctions on Moscow. 'I believe he wants peace,' Trump said of Putin in February. 'I trust him on this subject.' But to Trump's surprise, Putin wasn't satisfied with his proposal. The Russian leader continued bombing Ukrainian cities even after Trump publicly implored him to halt via social media ('Vladimir, STOP!'). Critics charged that Putin was playing Trump for a fool. The president bristled: 'Nobody's playing me.' But as early as April, he admitted to doubts about Putin's good faith. 'It makes me think that maybe he doesn't want to stop the war, he's just tapping me along,' he said. 'I speak to him a lot about getting this thing done, and I always hang up and say, 'Well, that was a nice phone call,' and then missiles are launched into Kyiv or some other city,' Trump complained last week. 'After that happens three or four times, you say the talk doesn't mean anything.' The president also came under pressure from Republican hawks in Congress who warned privately that if Ukraine collapsed, Trump would be blamed the way his predecessor, President Biden, was blamed for the fall of Afghanistan in 2022. So last week, Trump changed course and announced that he will resume supplying U.S.-made missiles to Ukraine — but by selling them to European countries instead of giving them to Kyiv as Biden had. Trump also gave Putin 50 days to accept a ceasefire and threatened to impose 'secondary tariffs' on countries that buy oil from Russia if he does not comply. He said he still hopes Putin will come around. 'I'm not done with him, but I'm disappointed in him,' he said in a BBC interview. It still isn't clear how many missiles Ukraine will get and whether they will include long-range weapons that can strike targets deep inside Russia. A White House official said those details are still being worked out. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov sounded unimpressed by the U.S. actions. 'I have no doubt that we will cope,' he said. Foreign policy experts warned that the secondary tariffs Trump proposed could prove impractical. Russia's two biggest oil customers are China and India; Trump is trying to negotiate major trade agreements with both. Meanwhile, Trump has dispatched Witkoff back to the Middle East to try to arrange a ceasefire in Gaza and reopen nuclear talks with Iran — the goals he began with six months ago. Despite his mercurial style, Trump's approach to all these foreign crises reflects basic premises that have remained constant for a decade, foreign policy experts said. 'There is a Trump Doctrine, and it has three basic principles,' Schake said. 'Alliances are a burden. Trade exports American jobs. Immigrants steal American jobs.' Robert Kagan, a former Republican aide now at the Brookings Institution, added one more guiding principle: 'He favors autocrats over democrats.' Trump has a soft spot for foreign strongmen like Putin and China's Xi Jinping, and has abandoned the long-standing U.S. policy of fostering democracy abroad, Kagan noted. The problem, Schake said, is that those principles 'impede Trump's ability to get things done around the world, and he doesn't seem to realize it. 'The international order we built after World War II made American power stronger and more effective,' she said. 'Trump and his administration seem bent on presiding over the destruction of that international order.' Moreover, Kagan argued, Trump's frenetic imposition of punitive tariffs on other countries comes with serious costs. 'Tariffs are a form of economic warfare,' he said. 'Trump is creating enemies for the United States all over the world. ... I don't think you can have a successful foreign policy if everyone in the world mistrusts you.' Not surprisingly, Trump and his aides don't agree. 'It cannot be overstated how successful the first six months of this administration have been,' White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said last week. 'With President Trump as commander in chief, the world is a much safer place.' That claim will take years to test.
Newsweek
6 days ago
- Business
- Newsweek
Economic Warning as More Than Half-Million People Could Leave US This Year
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. The U.S. could see hundreds of thousands leave the country this year thanks to President Donald Trump's immigration agenda, but experts believe his aggressive campaign of deportations and entry limitations could shrink the foreign-born labor force to the detriment of the economy. In a paper recently published by the conservative-leaning American Enterprise Institute (AEI), researchers estimated that U.S. net migration could end up between a negative 525,000 and 115,000 this year, which they said reflects "a dramatic decrease in inflows and somewhat higher outflows." This compares to nearly 1.3 million in 2024, according to Macrotrends, and 330,000 in 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic brought global travel to an abrupt standstill. If their lower-end forecasts prove correct, it would represent the first time the U.S. has seen negative net migration in decades. Economic Warning As Over Half a Million People Could Leave US This Year Economic Warning As Over Half a Million People Could Leave US This Year Newsweek Illustration/Canva/Getty Given much of the American labor force consists of foreign-born workers—19.2 percent, per the Department of Labor—and immigrants also make up a significant share of the spending market, such a decline could put downward pressure on the labor force and consumer spending and reduce GDP this year by up to 0.4 percent. This echoes the findings of another paper, published by the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas last week that estimates the decline in immigration could mean a 0.75 percent to 1.0 percent hit to GDP growth this year. "The drop in migrant inflows, and the drop in the foreign-born population more broadly, will have adverse effects on growth in the U.S. labor force, which will spill over into almost every sector of the economy," Madeline Zavodny, one of the authors of Dallas Fed paper, told Newsweek. This is exacerbated by the country's low birth rate—already a source of economic unease—which is leading to a shrinking share of the population in the "working-age" bracket. "The U.S. population is aging," Zavodny said, "and we rely on new immigrants to help fuel growth in the labor force and key sectors, from agriculture to construction to health care." White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson, in response to some of these fears, told Newsweek: "President Trump's agenda to deport criminal illegal aliens will improve Americans' quality of life across the board. American resources, funded by American taxpayers, will no longer be stretched thin and abused by illegals." "President Trump is ushering in America's golden age and growing our economy with American workers," she added. Farm workers labor in the fields south of Bakersfield, in Kern County, California's breadbasket, on April 9, 2025. Farm workers labor in the fields south of Bakersfield, in Kern County, California's breadbasket, on April 9, 2025. Frederic J. Brown/AFP via Getty Images Giovanni Peri, a labor economist and professor at the University of California, Davis, said that the jobs impact of a sustained decline in net inflows will be felt the strongest in lower-skilled areas such as construction, agriculture, hospitality and personal services, and roles where American-born workers are unlikely to offset declining migrant inflows. As a consequence, he told Newsweek, prices in these sectors will likely increase. Stan Veuger, senior fellow in economic policy studies at AEI and one of the authors of the working paper, similarly said that the agriculture, leisure and construction sectors will be hit hardest by the drop in labor supply. He added that, on the demand side, a drop in foreign-born workers will impact real estate, as well as the retail and utilities sectors, the most. "Large firms may be able to attract some more workers to replace them, usually paying higher wages," Peri said, "while smaller firms will be more at risk of staying in business as they have smaller productivity and margins." Zavodny also said that small businesses will suffer the most—given these traditionally struggle to access temporary worker programs such as H-2A and H-2B visas—but that large employers will be affected too, and that "everyone will lose part of their customer base." The American Immigration Council estimates that the country's foreign-born population possesses about $1.7 trillion in spending power—of which $299 billion comes from undocumented immigrants—and paid $167 billion in rent in 2023. As outlined in AEI's paper, lower spending will reduce business revenues, prompting layoffs and putting another form of pressure on the labor market besides the declining workforce. Despite the potential economic fallout, Trump shows no signs of relenting on his campaign promises regarding immigration, with deportations in full swing and the president having recently signed the GOP reconciliation bill that frees up about $150 billion to help enforce that part of his agenda. "I would hope so, though I am not optimistic," said AEI's Stan Veuger, when asked whether the impact on economic growth could prompt a reconsideration of the administration's stance. "I think the people driving immigration policy in the White House do not care about the economic [or humanitarian] impact of their immigration policies."
Time of India
6 days ago
- Business
- Time of India
Trying to pay for college? Your options just got worse
Tired of too many ads? Remove Ads Also Read: What it takes for international students to study and thrive in Australia Also Read: New Zealand aims to double international education market by 2034 Tired of too many ads? Remove Ads Tired of too many ads? Remove Ads The message from the Trump administration to working-class Americans who want to go to college is: You're on your own. It is part of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act's broad effort to scale back spending on the poor and middle class in order to finance tax breaks for the rich. It's also a dramatic reversal in the American compact with higher education that enshrines into law a flawed policy that will discourage college enrollment among a generation of lower-income a century, the US has improved its global competitiveness by cultivating a higher education system that creates a talented and skilled workforce. As vast as the US higher education system is, however, it has fallen short. Costs are soaring, public trust is declining, and universities aren't meeting the needs of high-impact professions like engineering, which must recruit talent from other countries because the US is not producing enough graduates. On top of these concerns, the prospect of rising college costs — and a shrinking earnings premium for degree-holders — has many high school students rejecting the traditional four-year pathways and increasingly turning to trade schools for their future rather than strengthen four-year schools to target these shortcomings and boost trade schools to meet rising demand, the tax-cuts-and-spending law slashed $300 billion from the higher education system and made college less accessible for anyone who receives a scholarship or a loan to cover the cost — which is to say, most next year, the act caps government-backed student loans at $65,000 per student, which will hurt Black and Latino families, who rely on them most. It eliminates the Grad PLUS loan program, which will force graduate students to find more expensive, less-regulated private loans. It removes much of the federal safety net in the student loan repayment process. It adds significant strain to state higher education budgets. And, in a sloppy attempt at increasing education accountability, it penalizes colleges that offer students degrees in important but lower-earning professions.'In all likelihood, it's going to impact low-income people who are seeking a higher education because it will make it more difficult for them to be able to make ends meet and find a way to finance their education,' explained Jason Altmire, president of Career Education Colleges and Universities, the national trade association representing trade schools and for-profit Beth Akers, a senior fellow at the conservative think tank the American Enterprise Institute which wrote a blueprint for many of the reform components, called it 'a really big step for accountability for institutions.' And the act does include a very reasonable accountability measure that requires schools to prove that their graduates earn more than an adult with only a high school diploma in their state. If the graduates fail to meet the earnings standards in two out of three years, the school will lose access to federally subsidized Direct Student Loans for future students in those degree idea has widespread support. Proponents say the earnings test will discourage degree programs from loading students with debt they will likely never repay. But it also could discourage students in working families from even applying for school, as Jon Fansmith, senior vice president for government relations at the American Council on Education, explained on a recent change was wedged into the budget reconciliation act with too little deliberation and even less debate. For starters, the formula is inherently unequal. Women's colleges, historically Black universities and institutions that primarily serve minority populations could be disproportionately affected because their graduates are more likely to be hurt by discriminatory wage act also disincentivizes schools from offering degrees in fields where the wages are traditionally low, but where the law requires licensure or even an advanced degree, such as health care, teaching, libraries, social work or cosmetology. Students will be forced to find more expensive, less-regulated private public colleges — which serve an estimated 80% of all college students — to feel the pain first. States will face billion-dollar holes in their budgets as a result of the law's massive cuts to state-run programs like Medicaid and SNAP. States often cut higher education funding when budgets are tight and public colleges can raise tuition and generate their own revenue, unlike K-12 schools, Altmire told decades, there has been a bipartisan debate over how the federal government should ensure that money going into colleges, universities and trade schools results in what's best for students. Conservatives have long wanted more emphasis on a market-driven, self-pay model that encourages students to make prudent decisions about their if properly designed, the reforms in the reconciliation bill might have been a justifiable attempt at streamlining the federal government's role in education. But the changes would have had to be accompanied by an accessible student-lending program and increases in grants and scholarships to make up for shrinking pools of federally subsidized bill offered none of that. Instead, Republicans couldn't get past their extremist obsession with punishing academia and decided to raise the tax on university endowments from 1.4% to 8%. Now, charitable contributions intended for student scholarships and academic research will be going to the federal government. Students will get education package does include one bright spot. The Senate expanded Pell Grants, the federal assistance for higher education that goes to the nation's poorest families, allowing them to qualify for short-term job-training programs and community president 'has talked about expanding support for apprenticeships in the trades — think about welding, truck driving, cosmetology, culinary, nursing, the Allied Health Professions, aviation, auto technicians, H-vac, things like that,'' Altmire told far, however, that's just been talk. Meanwhile, many schools that train doctors, nurses and lawyers are 'very concerned' that the new cap on federal loans will dissuade people from going into those fields, Altmire added, especially if they come from lower-income keeps forgetting that by 2031,72% of all jobs in the US are expected to require some form of postsecondary education or training. Instead of using government to pry open the door to economic opportunity, lawmakers decided to use government to slam that door shut.
