Winner take all for the jobs that survive
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This narrative has been going on since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution. Luddites much?
And in our own time- I remember when my bosses boss proudly unveiled the first desktop computer in the office and said 'Half of you will be gone once we learn how to operate this thing". Instead, we hired MORE people because-- well- even with desktop computing, the business still needed people to operate.
I’d love to see evidence that the threat of AI is fueling this perfectionism. Seems like an enormous stretch to me.
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True. Yet vast swaths of jobs did vanish. And existing employees often find it hard to retrain. This country sees a lot more churn than many countries out there.
It is possible some of the seriousness that kids acquire is because of the stress they see their parents go through.
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The difficulty with new technology isnt that the economy will not adapt, it is the personal cost to the labor impacted. When energy sources shifted ( along with employment), coal miners did not become nuclear power operators. So yes, new jobs were created, but not necessarily for the same people who filled the old ones. The advent of computers did end up putting plenty of secretaries out of work, even If it created software engineering jobs. Unlikely the same types of people would apply to both.
So yes, in a winner take all society, it makes sense for students to invest heavily in their own intellectual capital to best position themselves for the future.
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It is indeed a paradox. The US continues to get an outsized proportion of the world’s intellectual talent, but keeps erecting barriers to prevent them from demonstrating it.
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delicate self esteem issues
and reminiscent of how kids are treated in little league baseball games
although I have heard of classes in my son’s college where exam scores ranges from 5 to 100 on a 100, with a average/median around 35.
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I agree with part of your post- but if we are talking about college educated young people, the gap between coal mining and operating nuclear power equipment is not analogous. And argues AGAINST hyper specialization and back to a more generalist/skills based approach to a college education.
We are still not in a winner take all society. There are plenty of college graduates leading a team of claims processors for a P and C insurance company making a six figure income (nobody majors in “Claims processing” in college), or directing a team of media buyers at an ad agency (that’s where all those poli sci and French lit majors go after all) or heading up the Development office at a museum, hospital or advocacy organization.
I dislike the winner take all trope. Every day I see perfectly ordinary people who have “regular” jobs-- even recent grads- and none of them are homeless or living on cat food.
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Absolutely there are. Just unsure if there will be in 20 years.
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Nvm
Job growth/decline changing to reflect technological changes is a very different issue from student perfectionism. For example, I don’t doubt that many coal miners became unemployed and did not suddenly become skilled tech workers. I do doubt that the coal mining and similar industry decline had a notable impact on rate of student perfectionism. It is more likely to have influences on major distribution and which career fields new grads are likely to favor.
If you believe AI is going to cause a general decline in all types of employment (I don’t), a comparable event might be a general recession that led to an employment decline in most fields, such as the 2008-2009 recession, I am not aware of a notable change in perfectionist behavior during this period, such as change in GPA beyond existing grade inflation trends, or change in score trends. However, there were other changes, such as the change in portion majoring in humanities, as noted in the other thread. When students believe jobs may be more scarce, some may avoid majors they believe may have weaker job prospects.
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Job declines lead to overall greater stress/less certainty, and yes, more student grade anxiety in my opinion. Add that to an atmosphere where due to grade inflation even a 4.0 may be a sign of very average performance, and of course students will become perfectionists to try to stand out.
For many years even average accountants had solid job prospects. Due to AI, it appears there will be less need for accountants, so the solid perfomers once hired by EY will move down a level, causing more competition at that level, and the dominoes will continue to fall. Same with software engineering. Those that remain at Google get to do more interesting higher level work, but Google needs fewer of them.
We used to have lots of jobs for high school educated people. Now, not so much, but we have lots for modestly talented college educated people. Will we in the future? Who will get those jobs?
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Organizations such as the BLS do not share your opinion about accountants and software engineers, predicting notable job growth over the next decade. However, they are not referring to only jobs at Google. There are many excellent software engineering jobs outside of just Google, If AI really does have rapid growth and becomes commonly used, this may fuel a rapid software engineering growth in AI-related fields. Somebody needs to develop, improve, test, fix, maintain, … AI related technology.
In any case, I am not aware of any evidence of AI being a notable driver of perfectionism, even at the anecdotal level. I also do not think this theory is as direct as other alternative explanations. For example, if you were to ask students who strive to get a 4.0 GPA, why they do so; I’d be surprised if anyone said AI/ChatGPT. I would expect many would mention both internal motivations and external pressures. I also expect some would mention hoping to enter specific fields that are well known to students as expecting a near perfect GPAs such as certain highly selective colleges, med school, etc. In contrast, the relationship with AI general decline is far more ambiguous. Maybe some students fear AI will take jobs and believe this will change employer behavior such that they only hire employees who have the pinnacle of highest GPA, rather than the things employers actually say they focus on in hiring decisions? There is not as a clear and well grounded a relationship.
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BLS is not exactly on the cutting edge of job growth prediction. I prefer Goldman Sachs, but regardless, I agree some subset of the high school student population is overly stressed by both internal and external factors and that is not likely to change.
I too dislike the winner take all trope but I dislike the winner take all reality a whole lot more. Looking at todays prices for housing, childcare, education, healthcare-yeah, there is a lot to be stressed about.
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My daughter (9th grade) is very anxious to preserve a 4.0 GPA. She says that if she gets a B, she won’t get into any good colleges. She is also concerned that taking too many non-honors classes will drag down her weighted GPA. I guess she learned this from her big brother. She was complaining about feeling anxious about her grades, and I told her that she should try to enjoy high school and that there were many schools out there that would admit her with Bs on her transcript. This made her frown at me like I was an idiot. “Not GOOD schools, Mom!”
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That’s so cute :-).
Obviously, colleges don’t mind random pockets of weakness here and there – it just means you are human.
I told my son growing up that he doesn’t need to get a 100 in any test. 97 is fine. 94 is also fine. Frankly if he is busy with other things, below 94 is also fine.
When he got his first B+ in college, I told him that this should be liberating.
In return he has taken very large academic risks in college as he freed himself from the yoke of high grades. There aren’t a whole lot of risks to take in school – not too much offered; too many guard rails. There are no guard rails in college.
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I suspect this is very regional.
My nieces and nephews growing up in an ordinary town in the midwest with parents who are in social services (one a state employee) don’t seem particularly riled up about AI/Chatgpt. They are “gunning” for a state university- and it’s affordable and has the majors they think they might be interested in. Both parents have graduate degrees; have jobs which on CC would be considered “ordinary” in the sense that neither of them work for Goldman Sachs or aspired to medical school.
They own a house, two cars, blah blah blah. If there is any anxiety about the future of the work world, boy, it seems to have missed their corner of the earth. Kids do their homework, work on the yearbook, get a job at the local mall or DQ, go off to college, get jobs, get married, don’t come home enough (you know the script).
There is more worry about access to reproductive health care (a real concern), the terrible demonization of immigrants and refugees (our family history), etc. than there is about “Jobs Suddenly Disappearing from the Winner Take All Economy”.
Not on their radar.
Are kids worrying about it in Atherton and Menlo Park? I have no doubt. But Northern California with two parents employed in Big Tech is not representative of the US. I doubt that well educated social workers, advocates for the homeless, lawyers representing disabled clients who have been denied a housing voucher when they are legally entitled to one, or historical society curators who specialize in 19th century presidential documents, are spending a lot of time worrying about it. Not to mention speech pathologists, physical therapists or facilities managers with certification in chemical spill remediation. These are all professions which require a college degree- and in some cases a Master’s or Doctorate-- so we’re not talking about blue collar workers whose job at the coal mine has gone away.
And their kids don’t seem to be perfectionists either. In some families, graduating from college and then grad school and getting a job as a HS bio teacher and coaching the science club is considered a great outcome. And if you’ve picked up a bi-lingual credential along the way- which enhances your employability- the whole family cheers.
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Your world and mine are quite similar.
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That’s awesome. My nieces and nephews are just a little older (30s) and thus are trying to figure out how to pay $3k month for childcare while saving for a down-payment on a starter house costing way too much and haven’t even begun saving for college tuition for their kids at whatever outrageous price that will be in 15 years. But I am glad it is working out well in your area.
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Yes to all of this. I’m a neuroscientist who is not too fussed about ChatGPT/AI. I know a decent amount about deep/convoluted neural networks and AI. Like most neuroscientists, I’m not worried about it replacing humans for most stuff anytime soon. Of all the issues, I am concerned about ethics (ooh, that requires study in the humanities!)
Will it change some things? Sure. Would I be a bit concerned if my kid was going into CS? Perhaps but probably not.
Just like self-driving cars (don’t even get me started), this application of AI is not a big concern for the majority of regular citizens. I hope my kids don’t worry about it, and proceed with their desired careers as they normally would. I certainly wouldn’t want AI to increase anxiety and perfectionism in students.
The world will always need humans to do stuff. We are just so much better at so many things than any machine. The brain is the most complex computer to ever exist and we have not even scratched the surface on what it can do and how it does it – that’s why I love my job so much!
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I really do appreciate the reassurance. It is just that I am old enough to remember when they told secretaries the same thing ( you are so valuable, busy men will never have time to type their own documents, you keep track of so many details, nothing could replace you, etc)
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