Will Claeys, a junior at Thomas Aquinas College’s East Coast campus, isn’t overly concerned about whether his philosophy studies will be a liability in a job market that is becoming increasingly saturated with artificial intelligence (AI). If anything, they may be an asset.
“Right now, the AI job market is really valuing philosophy majors more than anyone else,” said Claeys in an interview with the Register. “They’re looking for people who can think conceptually and think in concepts.”
Amid concerns about the ripple effects of AI’s spread through the economy and culture, Claeys’ perspective is optimistic. Nonetheless, many Catholic higher-learning institutions are facing new questions about how potential upheavals in the job market may affect the relevance of a traditional liberal arts degree.
The issue of AI as it relates to liberal arts graduates “has come up multiple times, and the response is complex,” said Gregory Beabout, a philosophy professor and organizer of the “Pope Leo Series on AI and the Social Teaching of the Church” at Saint Louis University (SLU).
At SLU, for instance, “you are likely to find both answers to your question: Some here will emphasize the importance of the new technologies and the importance of students learning how to become comfortable with using them, and others will emphasize the need for developing a traditional liberal arts approach through practices of silent contemplation, face-to-face dialogue, pen-and-paper writing and reading,” Beabout added.
Some students and professors emphasize the integration of AI into the curriculum to equip students with a potentially-much-needed skill in the rapidly evolving job market, according to Beabout.
But many students, professors and college leaders at SLU and other institutions insist that a traditional liberal arts degree, especially one shaped by Catholic values, is more relevant than ever.
Students at the University of Dallas and their parents, for instance, maintain the belief that a liberal arts education is valuable, said Andrew Ellison, vice president for enrollment management at the university, in an email to the Register.
“[T]hey are already inclined to believe that such an education, rich in human interaction, personal experiences, and the study of humane disciplines such as literature, philosophy, theology, history, and art, is the best preparation for a future in which AI takes over automatable tasks and human intelligence is at a premium.” He added, “We are finding that our message about the value of a real college degree — one that educates students for wisdom and human excellence, as opposed to one that merely trains students in technical skills — is falling on fertile soil.”
‘AI Can’t Do That’
AI predictions often fall into either apocalyptic alarm or utopian exuberance. Father Philip Larrey, a philosophy professor at Boston College, is among those who think the reality may end up falling somewhere in the middle.
“Let’s not overhype what’s going to take place in the future,” Father Larrey said.
Some Catholic higher-education experts stress that the Catholic liberal arts education’s emphasis on the formation of the whole human person will equip graduates with the skills they need to be competitive in an AI-dominated job market.
This prediction tracks with the assessment of Claeys, particularly in terms of being able to catch and correct crucial errors.
AI’s failure to consistently provide accurate information is well documented, as seen, for instance, by its recent confusion over Pope Leo XIV’s election.
Faced with concerns over AI’s accuracy, Claeys said, “[I]t is going to be crucial that we have people that are able to look past the mistakes, read the program carefully, figure out what’s actually useful information in a certain program and what’s not, figure out the highlights of whatever text they’re looking at.”
“Those colleges that are seriously committed to the liberal arts and more speculative sciences are most likely to form students to make contributions that cannot be replaced by AI,” said Patrick Reilly, president of The Cardinal Newman Society, which, like the Register, publishes a guide on faithfully Catholic colleges. “Even more so, this will be the case at serious religious colleges like The Newman Guide colleges. That’s because these colleges form students to be more human, free of ideological restraint.”
Boston College’s Father Larrey says there is a chance some small Catholic liberal arts colleges may be caught off guard by the AI revolution. But the type of liberal arts education that many of these institutions offer is not something that can be easily replaced by an AI program. He points to Thomas Aquinas College’s West Coast campus in Santa Paula, California, which has a Great Books curriculum that emphasizes reading the original works and discussing them in class. “Now, an AI can’t do that,” Father Larrey said.
“[M]any graduates get their first jobs through their internships, experiential learning placements, summer positions, and the like, where employers have witnessed their character, judgment, teamwork, and all those ‘human intelligence’ skills that we associate with a Catholic liberal arts education,” said Donna Carroll, president of the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities, which supports Catholic higher-education institutions. “So, as with any disruptor, the job market seeks a combination of both — emotional and artificial intelligence.”
Graduates of Catholic liberal arts colleges may have an edge in the jobs marketplace because they are “capable of the ethical and philosophical thinking that will be greatly needed in an AI world,” Reilly noted.
But he sees another side to the issue: Workers who use AI seem more likely to continue to survive in their jobs, which is why he teaches his students what AI is and how to use it. Not only will those students become more competitive job candidates in terms of technological know-how than AI-illiterate workers, but they also will understand its limitations so they can identify for their managers areas of work that cannot be replaced with AI, according to Eugene Gan, a professor of interactive media, communications and fine art at the Franciscan University of Steubenville.
Job-Market Jitters
Amid frequent concerns over potential job loss to AI, some analysts predict that new jobs will be created as a result, although this may not be enough to balance out the losses.
For example, one estimate published by the World Economic Forum warned of 83 million job losses, alongside the creation of 69 million new jobs globally, resulting in a net reduction of 14 million overall.
In general, today’s graduates are facing significant headwinds in today’s job market. According to the World Economic Forum, 40% of employers expect to reduce their workforce due to AI.
Of the jobs that are available, fewer jobs require a college degree, calling into question whether a higher education — liberal arts or otherwise — is worth the time and expense.
“Really any profession that doesn’t require some physical activity is in jeopardy in a sense,” said Gan.
Catholic liberal arts colleges that don’t plan ahead risk being unprepared for the technological tidal wave that is coming, experts warn.
“It doesn’t seem like there is a full enough response to how AI really impacts us and will impact us,” said Gan, who is also the author of Infinite Bandwidth: Encountering Christ in the Media. “If they do not have a full understanding for how AI is impacting and will impact students, careers, culture, then, yes, there are severe risks involved.”
What’s a University to Do?
Smaller liberal arts schools may have one advantage: They can pivot quickly to a jobs landscape that is being rapidly reshaped, according to Gan. Larger institutions may have more resources to adapt but may be slower to do so.
He recommends that colleges “be open to the possibility that AI is a tool that can be integrated … as opposed to the mindset that AI is being used for plagiarism, so we need to find applications that would counter that.”
Boston College created a steering committee on AI that has been meeting for three years, according to Father Larrey. “We haven’t really reached any conclusion yet, which is kind of typical because you have to be very careful. You don’t want to mandate something and then find out, ‘Oh, we didn’t take into account this; we didn’t look at that,’” he said.
Even then, Father Larrey noted that the committee is unlikely to propose a university-wide policy.
“Rather, the president wants each department to come up with their own policy, which I think makes perfect sense because there’s just so much difference between, for example, the Business School and the Department of Philosophy,” he said.
For some professions, AI may not take someone’s job; instead, it might take over a task a person once performed, according to Father Larrey, who gave the example of attorneys. “Lawyers haven’t been replaced,” he said, but paralegals might be at risk.
As of publication, the Register had yet to find an example of an institution that has developed a formal comprehensive plan for how to adjust to the impact generative AI could have on the relevance of a liberal arts degree. But there’s no question that Catholic higher-education leaders are aware of the issue and at least broadly considering its implications.
“Most institutions currently offer training workshops, communities of practice, weekly blogs, etc. aimed at helping faculty, staff and students keep up with and integrate AI into their everyday,” Carroll, of the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities, said.
Notre Dame has a special hub of its website devoted to anything AI-related, though the initiative mainly seems focused on the uses of AI by students and teachers.
Georgetown has launched an “AI, Analytics, and the Future of Work” initiative, but the project aims to provide insights to the larger social and economic problem of AI and the workforce, rather than reflect on what the ramifications might be for higher-education institutions like itself. A representative of the university told the Register that none of its experts could speak to the specific issue of AI and the relevance of a liberal arts degree for entering the workforce.
Likewise, Saint Louis University is in the midst of a yearlong series of panel discussions on AI and Catholic social teaching, encompassing topics such as surveillance, misinformation, war and diplomacy and health care, as well as one panel devoted to “education, research, and the quest for truth,” which mainly addressed the use of AI by students, how AI technology is being developed, and how it could transform society.
‘The Wave Is Coming’
At the core of that ethical and philosophical outlook is the distinction between the human person and AI technology.
As the recent Vatican document Antiqua et Nova noted, “AI should not be seen as an artificial form of human intelligence but as a product of it.”
Franciscan University’s Gan cautions against a tendency in U.S. culture to attribute too much intelligence to AI to the point of idolizing it.
“AI is not sentient,” he said. “It is definitely not some sort of god, where people are using it to predict and foretell the future.”
“I don’t think 300 million people are going to be out of a job. But I do know that the wave is coming,” Father Larrey said.
“If these small liberal arts colleges … understand the nature of learning and the nature of teaching, they’re not going to be blown away by AI,” Father Larrey added, “because human nature is different than artificial intelligence.”
With his liberal arts education, Claeys has a positive outlook about his job opportunities after graduation.
Employers are “looking for people that know how to think very big-picture concepts and then kind of put them into practice with artificial intelligence,” he said.
“I think, frankly, TAC is one of the best schools in the country for that,” he said. “It’s an intellectual formation that makes you think [about] concepts and lets you compare different concepts to each other.”
“To use something like AI properly,” he said, “you need a group of students and a group of graduates that are going to be very responsible and are going to understand human dignity in a way that many people in the secular world do not.”
Register staff writer Gigi Duncan contributed to this story.