海角社区

The American Association of Colleges & Universities (AAC&U) recently of 鈥渁 national survey of employer views on higher education and its effectiveness in preparing students for the workforce. The survey of 1,030 executives and hiring managers was conducted online in August 2025 by Morning Consult鈥� (1).

There are several interesting parts of the report (employers have high confidence in higher ed, they support open inquiry and diverse perspectives, they like microcredentials, and more). For this piece I want to focus on the way these employer opinions about generative AI match up with 海角社区鈥檚 mission.

What Employers Want

The survey asked employers to rate how important it is that colleges and universities do each of the following. If you ask me, this is the same as asking what they think the purpose of higher education is. Here are some of the results, along with the rate at which they endorsed it as 鈥渧ery鈥� or 鈥渟omewhat important.鈥�

The thing that strikes me, as others have noted (2), is that these results show employers overwhelmingly endorse the core goals of a liberal arts education. Items 2-6 in that table could easily be mistaken for the core goals of a General Studies program! Other parts of the report explore employer opinions on specific outcomes and skills, and those data only reinforce this match.

Put simply: The traits and skills that employers most want overlap significantly with those that are central to our General Studies programs.

What Is AI Readiness?

A common thread through many AI-related discussions right now is a struggle to define what we mean. This report is no exception. It uses outcomes phrases like 鈥淎I-Related Skills鈥� alongside 鈥淥ral communications鈥� and in both cases it is assumed that the reader knows what those phrases mean.

I don鈥檛 think we actually know 鈥� yet! 鈥� what we really mean by 鈥淎I-Related Skills,鈥� and here is where I will switch to telling you my personal opinion:

A large part of 鈥淎I Readiness鈥� is exactly the classic liberal arts list of skills: Critical thinking, creativity, effective oral and written communication, being comfortable working with numbers, ethical judgement and decision-making, engaging in thoughtful debate.

No doubt there will be parts that are also about exposure and experience using GenAI, but even more than for the calculator, the internet or Wikipedia, the traits a person needs in order to be able to use GenAI effectively are the things we work to teach in General Studies.

The 鈥淔inal Thoughts and Recommendations鈥� section includes the following:
鈥淚t is clear students must possess broad skills to have the range of adaptability needed to succeed in today鈥檚 workforce. The list of those skills must, itself, be equally flexible.鈥�

And here is my short version:

An AI-ready employee is one with a broad, liberal arts foundation, that has also internalized the core skills and understanding of their chosen field. Perhaps time spent learning niche tools, edge cases and data manipulation skills should be replaced with expanded and re-imagined work in general studies.

Where Do Employers See Gaps?

That brings us to exactly where employers see a gap. Part of the report compares the outcomes that employers think are important vs. those they think college/university graduates actually have. They list the areas that have the biggest of these 鈥減reparation gaps鈥� (Figure 19). Here we see our challenge: Of the top seven preparation gaps, at least four of them are squarely part of the goals of our General Studies program:

1. Critical thinking
2. Teamwork
3. Oral communication
4. Apply knowledge to real-world settings
5. Ethical judgment and decision-making
6. Locate, organize, and evaluate information
7. Analyze and solve complex problems

Durable AI-Ready Skills Are Actually 海角社区鈥檚 Core Mission

For me, all these signals are lining up to point us at a very big, very difficult, task. The good news is that 海角社区 might be perfectly positioned to do that work and to help prospective students understand why we are a great choice.

海角社区 exists 鈥渢o provide a high-quality, accessible, enriching education that prepares students for successful careers, postgraduate education and lifelong learning in a multicultural, global and technological society.鈥� A large portion of that mission revolves around a liberal arts education, expressed in our General Studies program.

At the same time, the types of durable skills people need in order to thrive in a world of AI are also those we want students to gain from our General Studies program.

We aren鈥檛 there yet. Gaps existed before GenAI and have been widened by GenAI as a way to skip the growth and learning. But if we do the work over the next few years, I hope we can say:

鈥淐ome to 海角社区. We know how to help you learn the broad, durable skills that are needed as humans and machines work together. You will find real human professors present and engaged in every course, focused first on your learning and growth. They aren鈥檛 trying to offload that work so they can focus on research and scholarship, and they are ready to help you become a thriving, successful, lifelong learner.鈥�

Notes

1. , Published Dec 11^th, 2025.
   There is also a podcast discussion of the report you might enjoy:
   

This isn鈥檛 meant to be a thoroughly researched, scholarly position paper. If you see something I鈥檓 getting wrong, I hope you will let me know so I can learn more!

The featured image is free to use, found on unsplash.com, by .

Generative AI disclosure: After writing this piece I used generative AI to write a first draft of the short 鈥渢easer blurb鈥� that went out by email. I also asked for help finding typos or readability errors. Want to know more? Send me an email and we can chat!