Apprenticeship 2.0 | Can the Liberal Arts Save Higher Ed in the Age of AI?

Can the Liberal Arts Save Higher Ed in the Age of AI?

How can colleges prepare people for work without losing sight of education's broader purpose?

In this episode, Joe E. Ross talks with Ben Wildavsky, senior advisor to the Harvard Project on Workforce and author of the forthcoming book Know How: The Global Rise of Hands-On Higher Education, and Pano Kanelos, founding partner of The Athos Group, former president of St. John's College, and senior fellow at the Civitas Institute at the University of Texas at Austin.

They explore an increasingly important question for higher education: How can colleges prepare people for work without losing sight of education's broader purpose?

Ben makes the case for a "both/and" approach—combining broad, durable skills with targeted career skills and the social capital students need to navigate the workplace. Pano argues that AI may fundamentally change what universities are for, shifting their focus away from skills that machines can increasingly perform and toward questions of meaning, purpose, judgment, and what it means to be human.

The episode discusses:

• Why higher education could become smaller, shorter, and more focused
• Whether college degrees are actually losing their value—or whether the evidence tells a different story
• Why a liberal arts education could become more important, not less, in an AI-driven economy
• How apprenticeship and work-embedded learning can bring theory and practice together

Listen to Apprenticeship 2.0 for conversations with leaders across higher education, workforce development, government, and industry about what it will take to expand Apprenticeship Degrees and work-based pathways.

To tune into the full episode, please listen and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.