Value of an English degree in the age of AI?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Most English majors go to law school, medical school, or other graduate school or they go on to teach in K-12, or general professional office jobs (e.g., HR, project management etc)-- depending on what internships they did, other specialized skills they picked up along the way. So it kind of depends which direction you take with it.

AI threatens most CS majors just as much as any others. I would focus on doing a major in whatever field you're interested in and you have the most aptitude for. Then accrue internships and specialized in-demand skills to suit the moment you graduate. After that initial hire, you become more about your work history than your major.

If CS were about writing inefficient 10-line functions that are easy to describe, then sure, it would be a threat, but it's a long way from being able to do anything useful or complex. It is however a wonderful assistant. It beats StackOverflow, hands down.

Agree about the wonderful assistant comment, but disagree about inefficient code. I mean, it can instantly solve hard LeetCode problems with excellent big O scores for time and space complexity, which 99.99% of human developers can’t do even if given an hour. In fact, most experienced developers I interview take > 30 minutes to solve an easy or medium problem.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Most English majors go to law school, medical school, or other graduate school or they go on to teach in K-12, or general professional office jobs (e.g., HR, project management etc)-- depending on what internships they did, other specialized skills they picked up along the way. So it kind of depends which direction you take with it.

AI threatens most CS majors just as much as any others. I would focus on doing a major in whatever field you're interested in and you have the most aptitude for. Then accrue internships and specialized in-demand skills to suit the moment you graduate. After that initial hire, you become more about your work history than your major.

If CS were about writing inefficient 10-line functions that are easy to describe, then sure, it would be a threat, but it's a long way from being able to do anything useful or complex. It is however a wonderful assistant. It beats StackOverflow, hands down.

Agree about the wonderful assistant comment, but disagree about inefficient code. I mean, it can instantly solve hard LeetCode problems with excellent big O scores for time and space complexity, which 99.99% of human developers can’t do even if given an hour. In fact, most experienced developers I interview take > 30 minutes to solve an easy or medium problem.

This is the issue--talented people in every discipline will be in demand, but how do you become experienced/talented if the rewards for being 'okay enough along the way' aren't rewarding enough/needed? And if we only need a far smaller percent of them to do the work? It's a genuine conundrum and no field is immune. We just have to find a way to appropriately value and sustain human life, development and growth as an end in itself not for its contributions to the economy. As long as people are fighting out who will be the "winners" and the "losers" in this we're all going to lose in the not too long term. I hope colleges help people grapple with this and imagine possibilities and solutions.