What’s the Point of College?

Derek Thompson (0:05)

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It's September, and millions of students are back on college campus. This is an interesting time for higher education. In surveys, trust in America's colleges and universities is near record lows. The value of college is in question, as tuition costs have soared in the last few decades, while the so-called college premium, that is the expected benefit from getting a diploma, has flatlined and even possibly declined in the last few years. The unemployment rate of young college grads seems to be rising. Meanwhile, artificial intelligence has unleashed a torrent of cheating on campus. It's created chaos in the job application process, as large language models allow students to apply for hundreds of jobs with applications that are often written by and read by large language models, which at the corporate level filter for key words, thus dehumanizing the entire process of moving from the college to the labor force. As higher education searches for its reason for being in this new age, some people say college should just be for fun, for hanging out, you know, like a country club that happens to hold lectures. But even that identity is in crisis. The Atlantic has reported that loneliness and isolation are rising on campus, and partying has declined, possibly related to our episode from a few weeks ago about how young people do not drink anymore. So to sum all this up, the costs of college are rising, the perceived benefits are declining, and nobody knows what to do about this infernal technology that can write full papers in one dumb prompt. Into this maelstrom, David Deming, the Dean of Harvard College, sent a missive two weeks ago in an e-mail to students. He said he was embracing a policy of so-called quote, AI encouragement. Encouragement?

The notion that Harvard would encourage the use of AI sent shutters to the faculty and student body, shutters that resounded across the country with many professors and writers announcing that arguably America's most famous university was launching an attack on academic integrity itself.

Today's guest is David Deming. We talk about his e-mail, the history of higher education in America, and we ask the two big questions. Number one, what is college for anyway? In 2026, what is college for? And number two, how should professors across the country at Harvard and everywhere else react to this technological threat to their core mission? Which is to teach students to become not only deep experts, but deep thinkers. In an age where our computers often whisper that they're happy to do all the thinking for us.

I'm Derek Thompson.

David Deming, welcome back to the podcast.

David Deming (4:28)

Thank you, Derek. I think I've been on this show this is my third time. And I realized that Matt Damon just made his third appearance on Saturday Night Live, so I'm going to refer to myself as the Matt Damon of Plain English.

Derek Thompson (4:37)

Oh, I love it. Great.

David Deming (4:38)

Yeah.

Derek Thompson (4:38)

Also a Harvard alumni. So you're an economist, you're also Dean of Harvard College.

David Deming (4:44)

I am.

Derek Thompson (4:44)

What does that mean exactly? What is your job?

David Deming (4:48)

Yeah, right. I'm responsible for undergraduate education at Harvard. So there's the president of Harvard, President Alan Garber, who's responsible for all the different faculties, the business school, the law school, the medical school, the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, I'm responsible for the undergraduate part of the university.

Derek Thompson (5:02)

And how does that work with your job as an economist? Because we're going to talk in a few minutes about a paper that you just published last week. So you're overseeing Harvard undergraduate education and on the side, still wearing the hat of being an economist?