Educational misalignment

In late June, the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) released a report titled “De-Skilling the Knowledge Economy,” authored by Brent Orrell, a senior fellow specializing in workforce development and job training. The report offers a sobering view of how artificial intelligence is reshaping employment in the United States, particularly in the professional and service sectors that form the backbone of the modern economy. Where manufacturing once employed the nation’s middle-skilled workforce, today it is finance, government, business services and health care. Yet just as robots displaced assembly line workers, AI is now displacing knowledge workers. The functions once assigned to office staff—scheduling, data entry, claims processing—are increasingly handled by machines.

Those of us who are old enough to remember elevator operators and the white-gloved intersection officers directing traffic understand intuitively how human labor can be rendered obsolete by new technologies. Other examples abound: switchboard operators, film projectionists, bowling pinsetters. Even Sammy Kaye, the bandleader of the 1940s, sang sentimentally about “The Old Lamplighter,” a job that had become obsolete a half century earlier. We have seen the future arrive before. The difference now is its speed—and the fact that it threatens not only physical labor but the very cognitive tasks that have long defined white-collar work.

The AEI report refrains from issuing long-range predictions, focusing instead on observable patterns and the accelerating squeeze on mid-tier talent. There is rising demand for workers who can combine technical fluency in AI systems with human-centered skills such as communication, emotional intelligence, and ethical reasoning. At the same time, workers who cannot adapt are facing downward mobility into lower-wage roles. Orrell’s report makes clear that the education system is not prepared for the transition. Traditional K–12 and postsecondary programs are out of sync with employer needs and poorly positioned to teach the adaptive skills now required. While some early efforts are underway—including AI-literacy pilots in schools and self-guided training programs for adults—they remain rare, fragmented, and largely inaccessible to those who need them most.

Several other respected institutions have reached similar conclusions. The Learning Policy Institute argues that digital literacy and AI fluency must be integrated throughout the K–12 curriculum if the country is to prepare students for the workforce they will enter—not the one their teachers remember. The Carnegie Corporation warns that without tighter connections between classrooms and careers, national resilience will suffer. The Center for American Progress also emphasizes that academic instruction alone is insufficient; civic readiness, soft skills, and active collaboration with employers must be integral to the educational mandate.

For this week and the next, our attention is turned to the physical state of our schools in both McCook and Cambridge. In McCook, the concerns include no less than cracked walls and sagging foundations. Those are problems the public can see and understand, which makes them easier to quantify—and easier to argue over. The only question is the cost.

The more consequential question, however, lies within those walls. What is being taught? Is it preparing students for the jobs that will exist five or ten years from now? Or is it reinforcing a curriculum built for a labor market that no longer exists?

Once the brick-and-mortar issues are out of the way, let’s maintain the current level of public dialogue but focus on more substantive issues. Let’s have a conversation about quality education.