Let 17-year-olds change their minds. In the age of AI, it’s their best career move
Source: Fortune ·
Colleges make 17-year-olds bet their futures on a guess. AI just raised the stakes.
From the source
Every fall, we ask millions of 17-year-olds to make one of the most expensive bets of their lives on a guess. Pick a major. Pick the college that fits it. Commit four years and tens of thousands of dollars to that hypothesis. And whatever you do, don’t change your mind, because that costs time and money most families don’t have. It’s a ridiculous system, and I say that as someone who helps run it. I’m the president of Ohio Wesleyan University, a liberal arts college 30 miles north of Columbus, Ohio, and I’ve spent much of my career in higher education. I’ve also spent it watching our industry penalize students for doing the single most predictable thing an 18-year-old will do: figure out who they are. The research on this is remarkably clear. A meta-analysis of 66 longitudinal studies tracking vocational interests from age 12 to age 40 found that those interests remain stable through most of adolescence, then climb sharply between ages 18 and 22. The “college years” are precisely…