The liberal arts are having a moment these days. As AI tools are automating knowledge work, there’s a growing sense that the best way to get a job now is to have skills that robots are still terrible at — like leading teams and communicating with other humans. Leaders of AI projects at Carleton College argue that liberal arts colleges are also ideally suited to adapt to AI. Jeff visited Carleton to test that theory, and found two faculty groups with very different views on AI.
For this episode we're focusing on how liberal arts colleges are adapting to AI. On a recent day at Carleton College, two very different lunch conversations among faculty reveal the variety of views on whether and how to use AI in teaching.
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“The Hottest College Majors in the AI Age Just Might Be in the Liberal Arts,” in Inc.
Carleton College LTC Targeted Audience Lunch - “What Students Think about AI and Learning.”
"You Can Do Anything: The Surprising Power of a ‘Useless’ Liberal Arts Education," by George Anders.
"The Evidence Liberal Arts Needs" by Richard Detweiler.
NOTE: This AI-generated transcript may contain some errors.
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Jeff Young:
Hello and welcome to Learning Curve, where we look at how education is adapting to the rise of generative AI. I'm Jeff Young.
The liberal arts are having a moment these days because of AI, which is a pretty big change, because for more than a decade, liberal arts majors have been on the defensive as students gravitated toward fields they thought would be more likely to get them a job, like computer science, marketing, business and degrees in majors like English and history have been in free fall. One analysis in 2021 found that the number of students in humanities degrees dropped 25% since 2012.
To give a sense of this vibe, that the liberal arts were seen as a lost cause, consider some books that came out in recent years defending them. One book by George Anders, published in 2017 was called, “You Can Do Anything: The Surprising Power of a Useless Liberal Arts Degree.” And there's a book that came out in 2021 by Richard Detweiler titled “The Evidence Liberal Arts Needs.”
Suddenly, the headlines have shifted. Though these days, students are fleeing from computer science programs. Enrollment in computer science fell 11% in just one year from 2024 to 2025 that's because so many tech companies these days are laying off coders and replacing them with AI tools, and as AI is automating, not just coding jobs, but all kinds of knowledge workers, there's a growing sense that the best way to get a job now is to have skills that Robots are still terrible at, like leading teams and communicating with other humans. An article in Ink Magazine in February captures this new spirit. It had the headline, “The hottest college majors in the AI age might just be in the liberal arts.”
So for this episode, I'm focusing on how liberal arts colleges are adapting to AI. The idea for this one actually started when I got an email from a listener at Carleton College who leads AI efforts there.
His name is George Cusack, and he argued that liberal arts colleges actually have a big advantage when it comes to wrestling with things like how to change teaching to make sure students don't just use bots do their assignments.
Carleton is one of the top rated liberal arts schools in the US, and it turns out it's actually just an hour's drive or so from where I live. So I asked if he would show me what he means. So one morning a couple weeks ago, I drove to Carleton and met up with George in person. It was a warm, clear day, though, as we walked to his office, I noticed that it wasn't exactly buzzing with students. Not too many people out right now. No, well, we're in a class session. Carlton has a reputation for attracting brainy students who are pretty serious about their studies, so I guess it made sense that everyone was in class. One reason that George reached out was because he says he's been frustrated that he feels like liberal arts colleges are kind of left out of conversations around adopting AI.
George Cusack:
What I've found is that the conversation around AI and higher ed for pretty simple and reasonable grounds, really tends to be dominated by what's going on at big institutions. And also, and there's some overlap here what's going on in institutions with a heavy online course presence. And you know that's understandable, because the a the issues around AI are a little more thorny, a little more intractable at those kind of schools. But what I find is that the way smaller schools, especially smaller liberal arts schools, are responding just the kind of resources we have and the kind of institutional culture we have leads to some very different kinds of AI responses.
Jeff Young:
George Cusack's job at Carleton is director of academic AI initiatives.
George Cusack:
If you wanted a kind of single sentence description of my job, I'd say it's to listen as much as I can to faculty and students about their needs around AI, and kind of figure out what resources the college can put to helping them out.
Jeff Young:
So what is it that he thinks makes the response at liberal arts colleges different?
George Cusack:
So at Carleton, what I'm hoping to show you while you're here, first off, just as as a liberal arts institution, our kind of overall approach to education and the overall culture we cultivate, both in faculty and students, is it's about content second, and sort of deep learning skills first. So critical thinking, metacognition, ethical reasoning. It's not that we're the only kinds of schools that teach those things, obviously, but, but I think, I think just about any faculty member at Carleton will tell you that that those things are the primary focus of every single class they teach, and so our ability to sort of frame the conversation around AI. I mean, I don't think that sounds like it was an active process. I think this is just how it evolved naturally. It's really about, okay, let's think about this as a critical thinking problem. Let's think of it as a learning problem rather than let's think of it as a discipline problem or a plagiarism issue.
Jeff Young:
And of course, many liberal arts colleges are pretty small, which he says can be an advantage in any teaching situation, even when some new disruptive force, like AI comes in.
George Cusack:
The smallness means our student teacher ratio is completely different than what you're going to get at a bigger institution, a massive, almost unwieldy, massive class at Carleton is 40 people.
Jeff Young:
People are freaking out, right?
George Cusack:
You know, that's, you know, we're it's sort of, you know, it's a, it's a matter of almost desperation when you you've got 40 people in a class.
Jeff Young:
So I picked this particular day to visit Carleton's campus because there were two different faculty meetings going on related to AI on the same day. The first one was a lunch sponsored by carleton's Learning and Teaching Center for professors to share experiments teaching with AI. It was a lunch series about teaching that happens most every Tuesday and these days, many of the topics revolve around AI. George says these types of lunches highlight another key advantage of liberal arts colleges in this AI moment, Carleton in particular.
George Cusack:
But this is characteristic of a lot of liberal arts schools that I've worked with. We've got have a very, very strong culture of Faculty Development and kind of exchange of ideas among faculty about teaching and learning outside of departments that really cuts across campus. You'll see this today. I think 30 some people have signed up for the thing we're going to which is not a huge number, objectively, but, and it's both faculty and instructional staff, I should say, but we're a faculty of 200 so Exactly, exactly. And you see that mirrored on the student side too. Students really want to talk to each other, and really want to talk and expect to be able to talk to the college about their concerns about AI, and learning their concerns about AI, and sort of broader ethical issues like sustainability. And so those kinds of conversations, and just the ability to draw on those and say, Okay, we know where the faculty are. We know where the students are is very different from what I've had in I've worked for mid sized and large institutions before. And just the your ability to kind of connect with the different sectors of campus is very different at a small school.
Jeff Young:
I love that he mentioned students there, because, as regular listeners know, we are often talking to students for the podcast. So before I went to this faculty AI lunch, I wanted to meet a few students and hear how they thought this liberal arts college was preparing them for an AI world of work, and it turns out the college was hosting an event for seniors that morning with resources to prepare them for a life after Carleton.
The event was in the student center, in a room with tables staffed by various campus departments. There was one for the tech folks about setting up an alumni email address, another one from the Career Center, that sort of thing. Aurora Juarez was there standing with a couple of her friends. She is a senior majoring in biology, and I asked her how much AI is on her mind as she's about to graduate and head into the workforce.
Aurora Juarez:
I think it's been on my mind a lot more within the, like, the last couple of years. I'm like, 2020, forward, but for me specific, specifically, like, I feel like I don't think about ways of using it for work. So then when, like, people are telling you, oh, you need to learn how to use it, it's kind of like, oh. Okay, I feel like a little bit on the fence about that aspect, but it's being pushed a lot. Like, you're gonna have to use it in your workplace. You should learn how to use it, like, work with it, but like, I don't want to, and
Jeff Young:
Why don't you want to?
Aurora Juarez:
Well, there's a lot of like studies about like, I guess at least in school that we, like, we talk about the cognitive depth of using, relying so much on those types of tools. And there's also, like, the environmental impact of like, using those sorts of like resources on like communities.
And, yeah, there's like that. And then there's also, like, even, I don't know just like, it just doesn't seem like there's a real purpose except for like increasing productivity. And I don't see the value of like productivity as like an idea when it's like prior that's being prioritized over like people, if that makes sense, yeah.
Jeff Young:
So in other words, like, if there's any benefit of this as it's being pitched, it almost seems like it's to an employer, not at all to the employee.
Aurora Juarez:
Yeah, yeah, definitely. And so I feel like I when it was like, first being like, pitched, or like talks about it, it was a lot more like a ways of helping people. And so, like, I think we've it's been kind of lost, or at least that aspect of helping people with like disabilities, or like learning, like text to speech, or like that sort of stuff, it's just lost. It's been lost.
Jeff Young:
So are you getting, you know, like, taught how to use AI at Carleton at all?
Aurora Juarez:
There have been a couple of courses where they're like, Okay, you're gonna ask it to write something for you, and, like, putting your information and have it right for you, or ask it for like, sources and stuff like that. Sometimes it hallucinates sources. It puts things together that don't exist, like from real, real authors. And then sometimes the writing that it actually does, from what we found, is that it also makes things up, and it's a very basic level. And sometimes it's not. It's less helpful for some things than other things we've found.
Jeff Young:
So her friend Evelyn Ponce was standing right next to her, nodding her head. She's a senior majoring in chemistry.
Evelyn Ponce:
Yeah, when Aurora was answering this question, I think I've had really similar experiences. There's been STEM classes where they're like, Okay, for your final project, you have to read this research paper, and it is way out of our depth. And part of it is learning how to read these papers. And we've been taught like, oh, you can use Gemini to help summarize this for you. And if you're confused, you can use it in this way, and this is how I would prefer you to use AI, because I know a lot of you are going to use AI regardless. And so in those senses we have been taught, but similarly, I haven't seen a huge benefit out of it.
Jeff Young:
And then, are you thinking you need AI skills to, like, get a job, or all that you know? Are you is it? Is it? Is it on your mind as you as you leave Carlton,
Evelyn Ponce:
I think it's been more on my mind when I've been applying to jobs, and a lot of them in sciencey spaces are asking you to be familiar with AI tools. I think it's really interesting, because I think before, it used to be kind of taboo to say, Oh, I use AI, and now everybody wants you to use AI and it's kind of not a requirement with job applications, but it is suggested that you have these skills.
Jeff Young:
And somebody was telling me, I thought this was interesting, is like that jobs, the employers want you to have aI skills, but it's not clear what that is. Is that fair? Like, what is AI skills that they want you to have?
Evelyn Ponce:
Yeah, I feel like a lot of these job postings just say they want you to be familiar with generative AI, but they really don't explain what that means. So I probably wouldn't be able to say really what AI skills I'm supposed to have. I think people kind of take that as like you should be more maybe CS wise with it, where you can maybe code, but when it comes to generative AI and like making images and stuff, I'm not sure if that's what they're looking for, but yeah, it's really confusing. Going into the workforce
Jeff Young:
Is that frustrating in a way?
Evelyn Ponce:
I think it can be sometimes, because I don't necessarily want to go the AI route or have to teach myself how to use these tools, but they're all being implemented into a bunch of things. Like PowerPoint has generative AI, Google has AI, when you look up questions now, you don't get the websites like before. Now it's always a Google summary. So I think it's kind of an AI summary, yeah, an AI summary. So it's kind of avoidable and unavoidable now, which makes it kind of difficult.
Jeff Young:
And would you wish it would just all go away the AI stuff?
Evelyn Ponce:
I definitely see the value in AI in healthcare spaces, but it's difficult. I would prefer if it wasn't pushed onto every platform, because I don't think a lot of these platforms really need AI and I think we're more than key. Of like making an image ourselves and deleting things from an image, I don't think we have to go and ask Gemini to do things like that.
Jeff Young:
So these students have gotten the message that they need to know AI, and they have an openness that maybe something good could come of it. As I was telling the students about my podcast and how I try to have on some people who are skeptical, and also some who are excited about AI Aurora perked up.
Aurora Juarez:
Like, to hear about, like, the excitement, like, what gets them excited? Because I haven't found that any, any sort of like realm of that, of like somebody telling me this is why. And it actually amazing me, like, oh yes, generative, about AI. It's gonna be so good.
Jeff Young:
Actually, Carleton has tried to make a big push to say that AI is gonna be this big new thing that students should pay attention. Last school year that was 2024 25 the college's president declared it the year of AI curiosity. And according to a campus website about this, during the year, we invited all members of the Carleton community, students, staff, faculty, alumni and community partners to join us in a wide ranging exploration of this developing technology and the benefits challenges and difficult questions it brings. But even after that year of attention and panel discussions and and that kind of thing, many students here say they are still looking for the why with AI. As I walked with George to the faculty lunch, I asked him what he's hearing from students these days.
George Cusack:
Well, I mean, it's so for instance, I taught a class on writing with AI last term, you know, small school, small class, there's only 12 students, but, you know, they were, they were all over the map, from a couple of eager adopters to, you know, a handful of students that were really sort of anti AI, but willing to engage. But at the end of the term, they said to me, we, you know, a bunch of them said to me, Well, I stopped telling people I was in this class because I didn't want the pushback I was getting about taking a class about AI.
Jeff Young:
Wow, I didn't expect that. Yeah, and I mean, I
George Cusack:
didn't get the sense that it was high stakes, that anyone was being ostracized for it. But there was a certain amount of essentially having to to explain why writing with AI wasn't a waste of a class.
Wow. And did you was that? Did that surprise you?
George Cusack:
It did, yeah, actually. I mean, you know, it's one of those things that it hadn't occurred to me once they said it, that seemed actually pretty consistent with Carleton student
Jeff Young:
culture Got it. Got it all right. Well, here we go into the Johnson house. This is the alumni Guest House week, and as George had predicted, it was a pretty full house at this faculty lunch about AI,
George Cusack:
Okay, folks, I had never bothered to use the mic in this room before they
Jeff Young:
They served up tomato soup and sandwich wraps and professors from a variety of departments had turned up. I sat at a table next to a classics professor and across from a professor teaching African Studies. The specific topic today was about an experiment that George had led to support adding AI assignments to freshman seminars.
George Cusack:
Basically everybody would do at least one activity where they gave students a piece of AI generated writing, and have them kind of critically examine that. What are you know, what did ai do? Well, what did AI not do well. And then another exercise where they gave AI one of their readings, had it, summarize it, and then again, just kind of criticized, what did ai do? Well, what did I not do?
Jeff Young:
Well, four profs briefly described their AI based assignments and how they went and one big theme that kept coming up was how negative many students felt when it came to AI's role in society in general. Just now, that was definitely true for students in a freshman seminar taught by Baird Jarman, a professor of art history who was one of the panelists at the launch.
Baird Jarman:
I was initially kind of surprised, but I find the students to be really angry about the existence of AI it represents, to them a threat to their future livelihood. So there's this great angst and loathing of the sort of overarching notion of AI. But all of them acknowledge that when you come face to face with a deadline and you have not properly time managed your schedule on a break neck, nine and a half week term, there's this very, very, very convenient little devil on your shoulder who can help you in oh so many ways. So there's this sort of love hate, mostly expressed as hate. But you know, they've all they they might not. Be native, but you know, they this has been the water they've been swimming in for several years, at least, so but what I was they want to hate it.
Jeff Young:
Another professor in the room, though, raised her hand and said she has had a different experience with students when she showed them her own excitement about experimenting with AI. I think I
Biology Professor:
I see some students with angst. I see a lot of students with relief, who are like, Yeah, we are using it. We don't know how to have these conversations. I also tell them, like jobs are if they go into a job interview and they say they don't use AI, they're not going to get that job. And so, and I tell them, we're preparing them for future jobs that don't exist right now. And so the ones who I see have angst are the ones who I also think are like, a little like in our college there are people who are like, I'm a person who doesn't keep anything. I throw things away. I don't care. I'm like, off to the future driving an electric car. But like, there are different biases they have. There are different spaces that we like living in and college. Our college specifically is one where we actually do like living in history, steeped bold tradition wear our gowns too, right?
Baird Jarman:
So how often do you wear your gown?
Jeff Young:
The overall vibe really did seem one of trying to figure this whole disruptive AI thing out. And yes, these kinds of faculty lunches are going on at all kinds of colleges. I definitely hear about them, but the folks here argue that liberal arts colleges just have a better system in place to encourage these discussions about changing their teaching and their curriculum when something like aI comes along. That was the takeaway from the head of carleton's learning and teaching center, Jennifer Ross Wolf, who I talked to right after the lunch.
Jennifer Ross Wolf:
One of the things that is an advantage no matter what you're doing at Carleton is that we're selective in our admissions, and we have students who come in already buying into this idea that it is going to be challenging, that they are going to be thinkers, that they are preparing for jobs that don't exist yet. That's been part of our narrative for a long time, because our alumni come up even before generative AI.
Jeff Young:
All this sounds great, but in my reporting, I also hear from lots of experts who argue that AI is moving so fast that this liberal arts approach of slowly experimenting and sharing is just not going to cut it. That argument is that the so called Lunch and Learn approach to innovation on campuses will just fail students because it won't be fast enough to prepare them for the changing job market. I asked Jennifer how she responds to that critique.
Jennifer Ross Wolf:
So I would say we have had to step up the pace of the Lunch and Learn. Which means what more Lunch and Learns working with faculty as they're coming in the door, to get them going right away, different kinds of lunch and learns and a little bit of, I will say, healthy pressure from the administration to really keep things going and be accountable for what we're doing and telling the story well. So we have an AI core committee, that is that meets on a pretty regular basis, and then we have an AI coordinating team. We got sent to a lot of conferences, hackathons, trying to kind of speed up our thinking.
And you know that little bit of being in the room with your boss and talking about what you've been up to and what the outcomes are little fire, more than, more than, yeah, more than if there wasn't an AI, more than if there wasn't an AI.
Jeff Young:
Yeah, and is that because this is the pressure from these constituencies, like the trustees, parents?
Jennifer Ross Wolf:
Parents, trustees, people who are hiring our students really? Right? Yes, that is my understanding, and it should be coming from them, right? They we, we want to see our students succeed in their life after Carleton, whatever that means. But we want to see them succeed by doing all of the things we've always wanted them to do, which is to be really good, strong thinkers and succeed in a world where AI exists and that's that's the connections we've been trying. That's the connection we've been trying to draw for people. I would say.
Jeff Young:
Okay, so those are a bunch of positives, but Jennifer and George both admitted that there are also some unique downsides of liberal arts colleges when it comes to trying to wrestle and adapt to any new tool, especially generative AI, I think.
George Cusack:
So there's so much faculty autonomy at an institution like this, and there's so much expectation among faculty and to some degree among students, that I should be able to go through to do my work the way I think I do my work best, which is not a weakness in any other front, but it can be hard when you've got this sort of, you know, okay, something major is happening. Something major is disrupting our basic methodologies. I don't mind you pushing back, but I'd really like you to engage at all. And I think it's very easy at a campus like this to just sort of decide, well, I'm gonna, I'm gonna put a pin in that. I'll think about it later.
Jeff Young:
And that point brings me to the other faculty group that met the day that I went to Carleton. It was a small group of professors who've been meeting all year who call themselves the AI free classroom group. Yep, that's right, just after the faculty lunch that I went to about AI. This other group held their regular meeting about how to keep AI out of classrooms.
We'll hear about what they talked about right after the break.
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Now back to the episode.
Jeff Young:
I was super curious to learn about this group devoted to AI free classrooms. The organizers declined to let me sit in on it, but they were happy to share what happened. So right after the meeting, I sat down with one of the professors who's part of the group. His name is Jake Morton, and he is an associate professor of classics at Carleton, and even among people in the group, apparently he has the strongest view when it comes to AI.
Jake Morton:
I see no value, none, just zero in the classroom for AI anywhere, but especially, I guess the only cat thing you care about. But I just don't. I just don't, I don't get why it's interesting or why it would appeal to me in the least like it's just completely lost on me that this would have any interest to me. Why is that to say more about what the I just what would, how would this make my life better? Like this, it seems the opposite of everything that has of my like, system of values, and the thing I tell my students, I always make this joke on the first day where I say, like, when I was a kid, we had the Jetsons and the Jetsons and you had the robot. They had an AI robot that cleaned their house and did the dishes, so they had more time for, you know, art and reading. And now I'm an adult, and I have the robot that's supposed to do the art and reading, so I have more time for my dishes and the laundry, and it's like, that's a raw deal. That's a raw deal. Like, the only thing in life that's good, man, right? Is arts and reading, like, this is what's good in life. And the idea of giving that up is crazy to me, like, but that's that's useless, right? The whole point is doing the reading and understanding it yourself. I mean, this isn't getting the fact that, like, it's horrible at writing summaries, but, but even if it was good at them, but if you don't have to, have to read it, it's better than nothing. No, you make time and you read it, or you or you don't do it right, but, but it does this whole thing of doing a bad job all the time is lost on me. Like, what's the point of doing a bad job five times? Do a good job once, and you're not going to write a paper, do actual academic work or have a legitimate, informed political conversation with someone over a cup of coffee, over a bunch of summarized articles.
Yeah, this is fake. It's like, I'm picturing
Jeff Young:
the Paris cafe, this vision of like, having a discussion, yeah?
Jake Morton:
And instead they're all sitting around like I read a summary of Sartre. Let's have a discussion. You can have a discussion like there's nothing there. And those are the things I think of as good in life. And I do this for a living because I really believe in it, and I'm a bit fringe, maybe a little bit too, because I'm a leader to it. I could. For a decade, like, I had a whole career as a cook first. And so sometimes I joke as soon as I have the zeal of a convert, right? Because I'm kind of late in life to getting to go to do school stuff. So then you
went back and got a PhD and got into the
Jake Morton:
whole like, yeah, exactly. And I went back to, I went to grad school, and I dropped out undergrad and got a degree late, you know, while cooking later, just on the side for something to do, because it was still cheap, man, it was the 400 bucks a semester. What kind of cooking I did, like fine dining, Mediterranean stuff, Montana and and so. So sometimes I think that has made it. So maybe I have, like this, like more zeal of a comfort view of the whole thing. Yeah, you chose this, maybe extra, yeah, exactly. And so I think maybe that puts it. And I think whenever everyone is like, Yeah, but it's more convenient, whatever I was thinking that dead Kennedy's record in like, 1982 give me convenience or give me death, right? Making fun of that. And I'm always like, did you guys listen to Dead Kennedys? Like, we're making fun of this 40 years ago. Like, what are you doing? Sometimes that like, 45 years ago, right? 44 and so that's sometimes like, yeah, I feel like I'm crazy or something, because I don't get why that's a
Jeff Young:
good so what do they do at this AI free classroom meeting? I mean,
Jake Morton:
a lot is just in the early stages of where's everyone at? What do people think? That's been a lot of conversation. It's still, it's still really in a beginning phase. And like, how are, how have people changed some assignments? What have assignments people have done that were successful? Like, what bombed? Yeah. Of this, like, where? And in some ways it's just like, almost like a support group, you know? And like, Hey, I'm trying to do this. I'm trying to do that, and this didn't work. And, and just also just gaging where each other at, just trying out to other people, How do other people feel on campus? Yeah, is a thing. I mean, when it seems the world is very like, you know, we had, like, what was it either last year, the year before was like, Carlton's year of AI curiosity, you know, if, like, when that's just the message to be really against it. In a Pedic for pedagogy, you can seem a little bit alone on an island or out in the woods or whatever it is, and so I think some of it is just to see, do we agree? Are there people on campus who agree or disagree?
Jeff Young:
Are there other groups? I believe there are similar groups like this on other campuses. Are you in touch with
Jake Morton:
any I wouldn't be surprised if some of the people in the group are but, but I'm not. I got, I got a two year old who never sleeps. Man, I don't do it. I'm behind on some of that stuff.
Jeff Young:
Yeah, at the meeting on this day, the group was talking through a specific intervention that they might try. The idea is to create a resource for freshmen to help make sure that they have the skills to write critically without turning to AI tools.
Jake Morton:
Is there a way to make freshmen seminars that could have this will be talking about? Is there a way to it was the beginning of it a lab that was like a Writing Lab attached to them, like, kind of like, science gets labs, or these math classes get these. Like, math, yeah. And so we talk a different couple of this, this, I mean, that was 90 minutes of what would this lab look like, but kind of the idea is maybe two different things, and one is just your inner room, writing, the writing happens now. And it would also pair with an idea of a 90 minute to two hour block where you just write because everyone's distracted all the time. So clearly you're not looking at your phone, no no phone, no internet, just you're writing. You've got your books and your notes and your computer or longhand and you're just writing. And then the second version of it would be more about being taught to write, like the active teaching to write, but it would be separate from, like, the specifics of a paper for the class, and it would be more like, if this was a topic, you'll write, write me a paragraph, write a paragraph, or I need an introduction or conclude something that like something we could work with, and then you're just doing peer review. And the idea is, like, over that 90 minutes or two hours, could you end up with two really good paragraphs. Like, what a joy that would be. And like the and they don't see each other's writing enough. And so there's a lot of stress that everyone else can write but me. And this you can find out the note all of you can't write. Yeah, and this would be a chance to realize they're not. You know, what would this be to just sit and work on on a thing in craft sentences and how they relate to each other. So that's an idea you would like to see that I'd love to see this, oh, man, absolutely, absolutely. I volunteered my time, like, unpaid, to be involved in it, absolutely. And I was like, Oh, but I would, I would come and teach these labs, yeah, like to help out. Because it was like, basically, if someone was saying, I'm doing a thing to try and help this aspect of education, like, if I'd have to put my money where my mouth is, like, I'm talking it, so I'd have to go help, right? Yeah. I mean, otherwise, I'm not being honest to myself, yeah, myself and like, so I'm not teaching this thing now, but, but if someone was teaching something and put together this cool lab and needed help mitigating the labor. Yeah, right, because we would be offering saying, like, I was like, Oh yeah, well, sign me up at a heartbeat. Because I would, I would love to kind of be helping with this thing, and I'd love to get some there's this real worry that freshmen are going to start showing up having never written, right?
And as there's time passes since 2022 when
Jake Morton:
chat, yeah, is that? So that's the fear, right? That people have that I hear a lot about, and and I the reason I would do unpaid labor and where, however you are, call it whatever, or just volunteer or service. I would like it was service is how I think of it to a freshman seminar like that is because it makes my 200 level history classes better, because I got burned all this time right now doing remedial writing stuff I didn't have to do 70. Seven, eight years ago, but now you know I could do it then, yeah, and if your freshman year you showed up and, man, what a statement by Carlton that like we value uninterrupted, like honest writing, like, we value that as a place. This is the thing that like, when you come here as a freshman first semester, no one's more gung ho in the world, right, than a first term freshman, right? And to be told like, this matters. Like, oh, wow, okay, man, I think we get people buying in whatever their majors were, at least I would have hoped so, right? And we find out, and that's what we were saying, is maybe we can get something going and pilot it out. This is, like, obviously the first thing. I mean, if this hits the podcast, like all the other people in the group, we just said that our you can't attend to three, you know? We don't know, I don't know what's happening, you know, but, but, but I think that that is a dream I would love, right?
So somebody at another university can take that idea and you'd be happy. Oh, my god, yeah, I would
Jeff Young:
love it. Of course, there are some who argue that AI chatbots could actually help students become better writers if used carefully. So I had to ask Jake about that approach, about trying to have aI tutors help students write better.
Jake Morton:
I guess. My experience, I'll admit, with chatbots are like the chat bots when I'm trying to do something online and I'm like, you know, I just want to pay my medical bill, shut up, you know? You know, it's like, they're just frustrating and annoying. So the idea that's going to teach you ancient Greek is lost on me. Like, I just, I'm just gonna buy it, you know. Or that's gonna make me a better historian or a better researcher. Or, like, I understand Emily Dickinson better. It just seems like a pipe dream. And like, if I'm wrong, it's like, so be it, man. Like, like, I guess I'll happily be wrong, you know. But as of now, it seems I just, you know, I just like, I don't get it. Like, how that's really, you think the chat GPT is going to make me like, a more sensitive reader of Emily Dickinson? Really, the chat the large language model, it just predicts words. How's it gonna like, I don't get it. How's that gonna it's like, oh, man, I just hear a better read on the end of the Sun Also Rises. How am I gonna get a better read on that? I just find it hard to believe that a large language model is gonna do that, as opposed to, like, you know, so I don't, I'm trying to think, I think somebody who is very up on his
Jeff Young:
is like, a person really pushing for excited about AI, yeah, would probably say, like, have you tried this? Have you done this? Are you using, you know, are you going on Claude and having it no with your whatever?
Jake Morton:
Not into trying No, no, absolutely. And I'll even, I'll come clean, because maybe this, like, frames it. I've never been on Facebook. I've never been on Instagram. Your records thing is real? Yeah, Oh, totally. I've never been on Spotify. Like, I just I, doesn't I? When each of these things has happened, it's not, it's not like, I never went on Facebook because I intentionally was like, Oh my god. It was just like, when it was happening, or people being like, Hey, there's this thing. Why would I want to do that? Like, I have friends, I want to talk to him. I go talk to him, I go talk to him. It's like, well, you can reconnect with like, Well, we haven't been talking so we got in a time machine to talk to you.
Jake Morton:
Yeah, sometimes, and my brother used to sometimes say, like, you know, you can't step off the world and tell it to stop spinning. But I feel like I was right about Facebook is a moral nightmare. And like, I was right about Spotify. It doesn't pay royalties to anyone. It's an immoral nightmare. And I feel like I'm like, Yeah, I was right. And I kind of am like, you know, going for three for three. I think
Jeff Young:
I'm right about this one too. I guess the only thing is, I can hear the people they can't get a job, if you don't know these things.
Jake Morton:
Yeah, but I guess I just know, like, what? But literally, and I'm not my devil, what's this job? Yeah, what is this job where you are a shepherd of AI to do work? What is that job?
Jeff Young:
Yeah, well, I guess these days, what is that job to do? Writing a few paragraphs for beautiful craft there.
Writer for a living. And you know,
Jake Morton:
yeah, you could be, I mean, to me, you could be a journalist, an academic, a politician, a speech writer, a judge, a lawyer. These are honorable professions. Sure you know, all of those involve being able to write, even just being a critical reader of the. News. To understand how to be a citizen and vote, you need to be a critical thinker and know how to organize your thoughts. Yeah, do any of those things? Those seem really important to me, and what I think of as as like, those aren't you working in a coffee shop? Man being a baker, those are honorable jobs. Man, being an artist, being a musician, and I don't understand how AI would have to do with any of those jobs. I mean, they're like, oh, you can't get a job unless you have it's like, Well, none of those jobs we're going to have AI. I don't get it like, and when I'm like, what is that job that has AI? I'm really not being a devil's advocate. I just literally, I'm like, what is it? What do you mean? You know, it's like, it's not gonna be my department admin. My department admin has 8 million things to do all day. They used to be active like, Yeah, can't be asking. I'm just like, who? What is this job? And if it's like, investment banker or something like that, it's kind of like, who cares?
Jeff Young:
Jake Morton has a very strict policy in his classes when it comes to AI, he forbids it on all assignments. To drive that point home, he gives out a handout in the beginning of all of his classes where he lists eight bullet points of how AI is banned in the class, including reading and studying, class recordings, pre writing, research and documentation, content generation, revision and editing that AI cannot be used for any of those things.
Jake Morton:
And I pass it out, and I say it's completely forbidden, and I'll take it as cheating, no matter what you think of it as. Right now, for the bears this, course, it's cheating, and I think you should be thrown at school like if you bought a paper. To me, it's the same as buying a paper.
Jeff Young:
So to have ChatGPT write your paper, yeah? It would be the same as going and buying one off the internet?
Jake Morton:
What would be the difference? Of, remember when everyone was up in arms that 2020, years ago, in the early 2000s everyone's gonna buy papers off the internet destroy English program. So it's like the same folk panic or whatever. You know, it's the same thing. I don't see how it's different. And then in terms of, and everyone buys in, and the thing like, I mean, it's just, I mean, I'm at a great place. I'm a self selecting School of people who try really hard. And then if you're also setting up for to take, like, Latin, Greek and ancient history, you are in a subgroup of the subgroup who tries really hard, right? I think I'm lucky there, yeah. And they're always down with it, yeah. I've never gotten like, pushback on that line. And I sell it. Maybe that's the wrong term, because I mean it selling it sounds like I'm faking it, but I frame it as like, this is what matters, man. You know, this is what's good. And then there's a funny line So Clara, who's in my department, senior, she's chair my department, and then is in that anti AI reading group. She has this funny thing. I don't think it's her line. I think someone said it to her, and then she said to me, as someone said, someone said, you can use chat GPT to do your editing, like on your papers. And it's like, well, who hates dinner and gives away their Sunday, right? And I want the students to feel that way, and I present it as such, and I say like, I mean it that writing this paper is this fun, and the proof is like, when it's classes are over, this is what I do for fun. I do go home and do this for fun. I mean it in my heart, and you should too. So I want you to come learn this fun thing with me and that outlining and brainstorming and finding that's where the joy in life lies, and I want you to come to it. And why would you let a computer do that for you?
Jeff Young:
So is this the kind of message that George, the head of AI initiatives at Carleton, is worried about? Actually, not at all. I was surprised to learn that George was actually a founding member of the AI free classroom group, even though his job is all about helping professors use AI on campus. In fact, George went to the meeting of that group the day I visited.
Jake Morton:
Yeah, but George, George is a, is a, is a, and I say this in the best way, but kind of an odd duck and that he like walks both walks, like he's both, like, this really big advocate of writing with AI and a really big advocate of AI free classrooms, yeah, and the fact that he went to both, yeah, that says a lot. You know, it's a feather in his cap, and I and he means it on both. And I feel like not many people feel that way
Jeff Young:
Now, I was more curious than ever about George Cusack, so after my visit to campus, I scheduled a zoom follow up with George to get his thoughts on Jake's argument that Carlton should focus on building resources to teach without AI. Do you are you?
Are you comfortable that enough mix, that enough of a mix is happening? Or are you worried that so many professors might take the look you don't need to know any of this, this. You shouldn't know it, and students come out without it.
George Cusack:
Yeah. I mean, well, I mean, let me I'd say, first of all, I mean, just in terms of the situation on the ground. Don't think that's happening. I think, you know, at most, I think we've got about a quarter of the faculty that are sort of, you know, kind of digging in their heels. No, I don't want this to have anything to do with my my classes. The the remaining three quarters aren't necessarily heavily integrating it into their classes, but are, you know, are sort of at least acknowledging it one way or the other, you know, or looking for ways to do that. If we had a majority or a critical mass of faculty that were, you know, were rabidly anti AI, I would consider it my job to try to convince them, but, but I would absolutely not consider it my job, or the institution's job, to compel them. I think that you get the best teaching when you you take people who are passionate about their subject and passionate about teaching it, you give them as much freedom as is reasonable to teach it the way they think it should be taught, and you give them resources to get better at teaching. And so it's, you know, it almost sounds a little pollyannish that way, but, but to get, you know, I mean to hone in on the example you gave, by sheer coincidence, Jake and I actually shared a student last term. A student was simultaneously in his I think it might have been an archeology class or no, it must have been classical literature based on on the way he described the reading. But either way, one of Jake's classes with the rabidly anti AI policy, he was also in my writing with AI class, and I only know this because I came in to to class one day to set up, and the student was there, and he was raving about his classics class and and so I listened in for a little while, and what he said was, you know, I learned to read in a way that I've never read before in This class, that the reading was hard, you know, and, and he really pushed me on it, and, you know, but, but gradually I learned how to tackle a complicated text, and now I can do it. And so at that point, I broke in and I said, Okay, well, who's the professor? Because that, I mean, that description could have been anyone in classics, but he said, If Jake Morton. And I said, Well, terrific, he has a pretty hardcore anti AI policy, like, doesn't, doesn't that put you off at all? And he said, now it's just Jake, yeah. So you know, and I mean that to me, is a perfect example of the rationale of that whole anti AI classrooms group. They, you know, they don't necessarily say, I mean, you know, some of them would prefer that the technology simply went away or was banned at the gates of the Carleton campus. But you know, they're the general attitude is, well, okay, yes, this is a thing that students probably ought to learn about, if only you know, to better understand this technology. It's going to affect their lives, but they also need to learn a bunch of other stuff. And, you know, it some classes really ought to show them how to do things without AI so that they can can better figure out how it's going to fit into their lives. And you know, I can't disagree with that.
Jeff Young:
I was also curious about George's take on this idea of a writing lab that would emphasize teaching the craft of writing without technology.
George Cusack:
If we think about what does it take to be aI literate, to make critical decisions around AI, you you can't it's not enough just to know how to do things with AI. You also have to know how to do things without them, so that you can tell what the advantages are.
Jeff Young:
I'm so interested in these two meetings because I think they kind of capture something about, you know, the issue, the issues we talked about when I sat down with you last week about what it means to wrestle with or to have AI in the mix in a liberal arts environment. How would you juxtapose the spirit of the two meetings, since you did attend at least part of both of them, and you know for sure, you know you have a good sense of both of the groups. I mean,
George Cusack:
I think that the two biggest, the biggest thing that the two groups have in common is that shared understanding of teaching as a craft that we all do together and that we all benefit from, from talking about with each other and from learning from each other.
Jeff Young:
So is AI good for the liberal arts, not just at liberal arts colleges, but across higher ed? Will the rush of all these bots bring new excitement and interest to the classics and history and English?
George Cusack:
I think there absolutely is we are, and AI is only a piece of this, of course, but we're living in an era with a lot of uncertainty to say the least. And I think the liberal arts. Arts are, you know, it's a it's a curriculum. It's a sort of approach to knowledge and approach to learning that I think is really about learning how to navigate uncertainty, both in the sense of, you know, helping the student kind of find their way and find themselves and navigate the world, but also, I think, in the sense of looking at the really big, difficult complications of the world, and the humanities are a piece of that. But I think it's, it's, it's less about the subject matter and more about the kind of overall approach. You know, computer science is one of our biggest majors, but, but every single faculty member in computer science will tell their students, do not just take classes in computer science. Do not over specialize.
Take classes all over. You're going to need them, and it will make you a better computer scientist. And so I think you know that there's a comfort in that, in a, you know, in a time when it's, it's impossible to tell what path Your major is going to set you on in the world. It was never particularly possible, but, but the illusion of certainty is shattering and and I think the other part of that is, you know, that I sort of alluded to, is the liberal arts approach is, is all about looking for connections across the curriculum. And so, you know, you said it yourself, that ability to figure out what, not just what the AI does, but what the AI does badly, or what the AI can't do, and to figure out how to do that, I think that's a skill you need that you get from studying A lot of areas of knowledge, and from being actively coached and pushed to put those different pieces of knowledge together. You know, that's not to say that AI hasn't raised its challenges, that it hasn't thrown us for a bit of a loop the way it has everyone in higher ed. But I think what we had at Carleton was a framework for, okay, we know how we deal with this kind of crisis. It's we do it by coming together.
Jeff Young:
This has been Learning Curve.
I'm curious to hear what you think. I'm guessing I might get emails and social media posts from people at other types of colleges saying their model is maybe best at adapting to AI, or maybe you don't see the liberal arts as so good at this right now. I definitely welcome your views. You can always find me at Jeff at learning curve.ff, and I hope you will subscribe to the show wherever you listen to podcasts and just share the episode on social media. This episode was reported and put together by me, Jeff Young.
You can find my other journalism at Jeff young.net. Our music This episode is by Komiku, and the episode art was generated with open AI's new image model. We'll be back in two weeks with more on how education is adapting to the AI era.
Until then, thank you for listening.