The Real Artificial Intelligence Crisis Is Workforce Transition

A recent New York Times essay gets the threat right: the biggest risk is not disruption alone, but whether workers can move fast enough into new forms of value creation.

Today’s New York Times opinion essay by former Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo makes an important argument: artificial intelligence could create a major workforce transition crisis if the country does not build better systems to help workers move into new roles.

I largely agree with Raimondo’s core points. And too many policy conversations still frame the challenge as generic “reskilling,” as if workers can simply be retrained into new roles (which are changing faster than educators can form a committee to study the problem) without deeper changes to how education and workforce systems operate.

Many parts of higher education still recoil at the idea of workforce alignment, viewing it as little more than catering to corporations seeking entry-level talent.

That framing completely misses the point.

Across multiple decades of research with both traditional-aged students and working adults (outside of the top 150 selective institutions), we hear a consistent motivation for enrolling in higher education: Advance My Career. For most learners, education is fundamentally tied to their long-term economic mobility and professional development. Institutions should take that signal seriously, especially when nearly one in five Americans has some college credit but no degree, representing a large population still trying to translate education into opportunity. According to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, roughly 36 million Americans under 65 fall into this “some college, no credential” category.

But there is an important nuance here. Students are not saying “get me an entry-level job.” They are asking for something broader: the ability to build a satisfying, durable career.

That distinction matters.

Workforce alignment should not primarily be about supplying employers with entry-level labor. The real focus should be designing systems that advantage the learner across an entire working lifespan.

Ironically, that goal looks less like narrow job training and more like the best traditions of liberal education. Employers across sectors consistently report that what differentiates strong performers is not just technical knowledge but higher-order capabilities related to thinking for oneself, taking accountability, and delivering outcomes.

The choice between “workforce alignment” and “liberal learning” is largely a false one. As well documented by Matt Sigelman and the The Burning Glass Institute Artificial intelligence is accelerating the pace of change in work - the institutions that will serve learners best are those that combine both: strong alignment with employer demand and serious development of the higher-order capabilities that allow people to adapt, advance, and lead over decades of work.