In the AI Age: What Do Students Need to Learn for Post-Graduation Success?

In an eSchool News essay, Scott Laband, president and CEO of Colorado Succeeds, asks the question: When it comes to AI, what do students actually need to learn to be successful for the rest of their lives?

Colorado Succeeds is a nonprofit, nonpartisan coalition of business leaders committed to improving the state’s education and workforce system.

The speed at which education leaders have moved to respond to AI has been nothing short of remarkable. Today, 34 states and Puerto Rico have issued some sort of AI guidance for schools. More than 70 bills about AI in the classroom have been introduced across 27 states this year alone.

Yet as schools debate every part of AI policy, including who is and isn’t allowed to use it, how they’re allowed to use it, and when they’re allowed to use it, they’re skipping over a more fundamental issue. What do students actually need to learn to be successful for the rest of their lives post-graduation?  

It’s a question that should fundamentally drive most education policy decisions, especially when it comes to students in the final years of high school and in college. Before schools can determine what students should avoid, they need to first understand what needs to be encouraged based on the demands of employers and the changing business landscape.  

The future isn’t set in stone, especially when it comes to dealing with new and emerging technologies like AI.  One-third of entry-level jobs now reference AI-related skills, yet students report wildly uneven access to AI guidance and little clarity on which skills will actually matter. 

Young people today are expected to change career paths more times than any other generation before them. Instead of looking at education as providing students with the skills they need to go from Point A to Point B, education needs to provide the skills that will take students from Point A to Point E back to Point B, all the way to some point that has yet to be defined.  

This isn’t a responsibility that should rest solely on educators to figure out. The best education systems are those that respond to clearly articulated employer demand in a collaborative way that sets students up for long term success.  

What we’re seeing in the age of AI is that career durability depends on fundamentally human skills that give students the flexibility and adaptability to adjust alongside technological and workplace demands. Students equipped with skills like judgment and ethical reasoning, problem framing and solving, and critical thinking — in addition to tool fluency and domain knowledge — will be the ones who find success long-term. 

How these lessons play out in the final years of high school and across postsecondary education is a task that schools can work collaboratively with employers to figure out.

The goal is to define a new standard of preparation that allows students, parents, and educational providers to make the decisions that work best for them.  

The challenge before the American education system is not simply understanding what technology can do. It is defining what human excellence looks like in a world where technology can do more than ever before. Until that question is answered, policymakers will continue writing rules without first agreeing on the destination.

eSchool News