Here’s something every parent writing a tuition check this month should consider: in a survey of 1,000 U.S. hiring managers published July 2026, 48 percent said they’d rather invest in A.I. tools than hire—and train—a recent college graduate. More than half of the companies surveyed have already shifted part of their entry-level hiring budget to A.I. Nearly a quarter of them plan to hire fewer new graduates than last year, or none at all. Against this backdrop, it’s reasonable to question if a college education is still worth the investment. And, in turn, to ask: What, exactly, am I paying for?
But look closer at what those same hiring managers said, and the story changes. Their biggest complaints about new graduates weren’t about missing technical knowledge. Instead, 75 percent said recent grads need help reading a routine work document, like a memo or a budget. Forty-one percent say they can’t write a professional email, and only 17 percent of hiring managers fully trust a new grad to represent the company in front of a customer. These are gaps in judgment, professionalism and critical thinking–the very skills that make graduates worth hiring and a college degree still a valuable investment.
Knowledge was never the whole product
For most of my career in higher education, a big part of what students paid for was access to knowledge. A professor with expertise who had read all the books; a library full of journals with information you couldn’t access anywhere else; a curriculum that organized an entire field of study into manageable pieces.
A.I. has made that part infinitely more accessible. Anyone with a phone can now ask a chatbot to explain supply and demand, summarize a case study or create a marketing plan. When A.I. gives each of us access to the same level of knowledge, knowledge itself becomes less of a commodity.
What’s still scarce is judgment. It’s knowing which answer to trust, how to confidently deliver a message to a room of skeptical people, how to work through a disagreement with a colleague or how to read a report and catch an error. Those are the exact skills the hiring managers said new grads are missing, and they’re the skills I believe the most effective college experiences build through practice, not just lectures.
What employers are actually asking for
A.I. skills do matter to employers, but it’s not at the top of their list. In GMAC’s 2026 survey of more than 600 corporate recruiters across 39 countries, communication, problem-solving and adaptability––commonly referred to as human skills––remain the most valued qualities in business graduates. Employers do report a shortage of new hires with A.I. capability, but they also cite gaps in grit, emotional intelligence and the ability to manage people.
PwC’s 2026 Global A.I. Jobs Barometer backs this up in a different way. The entry-level positions most drastically reshaped by A.I. are now also seven times more likely to require senior-level capabilities such as leadership, face-to-face communication and discernment. What it means: A.I. isn’t erasing the bottom rung of the career ladder, so much as changing what employers expect from the people who enter it. A.I. is increasingly capable of handling the routine tasks most typical in the early stage of any career. It’s also requiring 22-year-olds to show up with the level of human judgment that a manager might previously expect from someone five years into their career. That means much of the value of a college education depends on whether it helps students develop those capabilities before graduation.
The ROI math still holds, but what you’re buying has changed
Earlier this summer, I wrote about the actual return on a college degree, drawing on a 15-year study that found the average bachelor’s degree generates about $87,000 in net value beyond what a non-graduate earns, with business and economics degrees trailing only engineering and architecture. That study also found that what you study explains 35 percent of the difference in earnings between graduates, while the school you attend explains only 20 percent.
That math still holds. I’ll add that while what you study matters more than where you study, the market is now rewarding judgment and communication over rote content memorization. So, the real question for parents this fall isn’t, “Will this degree pay off?” It’s, “Does this program actually build a lifelong skill, like judgment, or does it simply hand out information my student could get from a chatbot?”
Parents seem to sense this shift already. In a 2026 survey of parents of high schoolers, nearly two-thirds said A.I. has changed how they view the value of a college degree. When asked what matters most in choosing a school now, they ranked internships and career placement above almost everything else, with A.I. instruction close behind. Nearly 70 percent said A.I. instruction should be “very important” or “essential” in the curriculum. Ultimately, career outcomes in this new era will depend on whether students can combine A.I. fluency with the human intelligence that employers value most.
Teach A.I. and human skills together, not separately or sequentially
Many schools are still struggling to accept and adapt to the impact of A.I. Those that are working to pivot toward the future are largely treating A.I. education and human skills development as two separate tracks: one class on how to prompt a chatbot, another on how to give a presentation, taught by different people in different semesters with no connection between them. But employers don’t hire that way. They want someone who can use A.I. to draft the first version of a report—and then has the judgment to know what’s wrong with the output, the critical thinking to improve it and the communication skills to present the final deliverable convincingly to a skeptical client.
At Kogod, we’ve built those two things together instead of sequencing them. We intentionally infused A.I. and human skills training into our entire undergraduate curriculum, starting with day one of orientation and building across the first year. We require two core courses focused on professionalism, one on communication and the other on career readiness. Every faculty member teaching our core undergraduate business courses is graded against a shared “professionalism rubric” covering collaboration, accountability, time management and everyday writing and speaking. That requires students to practice each skill rigorously, regardless of the discipline. This approach favors immersion and demonstrated ability over basing a grade on whether a student showed up to class and passed the exam.
What to actually ask this fall
If you’re a parent sitting through orientation weekend this August, skip the questions about dining halls and dorm amenities and instead ask: Does this program teach A.I. use inside the major, or as a separate add-on? How often do students have to present and defend their work? Does the school regularly talk to employers about what’s missing in recent graduates, or is the curriculum running on autopilot? Does the program give students opportunities to solve ambiguous, real-world problems where there isn’t a single correct answer?
Those answers will tell you more about what you’re buying. The knowledge is nearly free now. What you’re paying for is the practice.
Casey Evans is the Interim Dean of the Kogod School of Business at American University
