The only people really having a crisis here are teachers who want to feel relevant.
One major problem: how do you get a job for which a degree is required, if you teach yourself via books/internet/AI? How do you get into graduate schools for which a degree is required? How do you envision advanced degrees working without funding or labs or mentors?
All of education is undergoing dramatic seismic shifts because of AI right now. Attempting to insult teachers for talking about it doesn’t reflect on teachers, it reflects on you.
The kids are fine; the rent seekers aren't.
And to your larger point: the entire university/graduate/lab/scientific system was created to formalize what was originally citizen scientists trying to understand the world from their basements. Scientific journals are just a formalization of nerds writing letters to each other about what they figured out. Consider from first principles how much of what exists now actually still serves that original purpose.
You want it to be a jobs program? Sounds good. Take their computers away and make them use pencils and you can create even more jobs.
You want to do science? Figure out how to do science. You want the kids to learn? Figure out how to teach them.
Just don't protect a jobs program under the guise of something nobler.
Figuring out how to teach kids is exactly what this article is doing. How do you propose to teach kids, when they refuse to put in the work, and reach for AI for everything? Your suggestion to make them use pencils seems naïve/ignorant/obtuse; this article is written by a computer science teacher. You can’t force people to use only pencils for homework (as the article points out), and it would be ridiculous to use pencils for writing computer programs in 2026. That suggestion is a non-starter. FWIW, the impression I’m getting is not that you have any helpful suggestions for education, but that you don’t have experience teaching and don’t understand what’s happening in schools right now.
Who is protecting jobs programs under the guise of something nobler? This seems like a straw man unrelated to your previous comment. I’m getting the feeling you’re anti-education for some reason, maybe have some bone to pick with the university system, is that accurate? Asking kids to teach themselves or forcing them to use pencils are not going to be successful ways to improve education.
And you're taking the pencil comment weirdly literally, like it apparently went completely over your head. We're clearly talking past each other. I don't see any purpose to talking about this further.
What heavy assumptions are you referring to? If you mean assuming that kids probably won’t skip university and instead will be self-motivated enough to use AI non-stop for several years in order to teach themselves enough to get a job as a biologist or a ballet dancer or a civil engineer, and if you mean assuming that companies and organizations probably won’t suddenly start accepting self-AI-taught candidates as being the same as having a degree… if these are the assumptions you’re referring to, then you’re right - I am assuming those things and I believe them. No matter how AI changes things, it’s a pretty heavy assumption you’ve made to think kids will self-motivate an education just because information is available, especially given that was always possible and still chosen so rarely that it effectively doesn’t exist. And it’s a pretty heavy assumption to think that universities and organizations will change together in a way that can vette the merit of prospective candidates any time in foreseeable future. AI will change a lot of things, but you’re underestimating our social structures and what things like the accreditation system do for the workforce and the economy. You can argue it’s got problems, but assuming like you did that AI can replace it anytime soon is a very heavy assumption.
If the pencil comment and suggestion to take away computers wasn’t literal, then you’re right, I have no idea what you meant. Feel free to explain. If you can’t, then I’d agree, there’s no further purpose.