College is expensive, and a growing number of skeptics have questioned its value proposition. Palantir CEO Alex Karp said late last year it doesn’t really matter where his employees went to college, and Apple CEO Tim Cook has said a four-year degree isn’t even required to work at the company.
The rise of AI has only added to doubts of a degree’s value. But some economists say college still holds some implicit value, like teaching students things AI could never learn how to do.
Carl Benedikt Frey is an economist at the University of Oxford and the author of a famous 2013 paper that estimated automation could put nearly half of U.S. jobs at risk. He paints a troubling picture for the future of white-collar U.S. jobs, saying as AI advances, high-skilled work is more likely to be offshored.
“If AI makes these jobs easier, you will see more activities shifting towards places where labor is cheaper, whether that’s India or the Philippines,” Frey told Fortune. “I think that’s going to put a lot of pressure on people’s wages doing knowledge work.”
Despite his estimation, Frey said earning a college degree is still worthwhile, as it imparts three core skills in which humans hold a competitive edge over AI: complex social interactions, creativity, and navigating complex environments.
Complex social interactions
AI has made leaps in communication advancements during the past decade. Despite that, Frey said those improvements actually make human-to-human interaction more valuable.
“The value of social skills have gone up over the past decade, whereas the value of math skills has been trending downwards,” Frey said.
That’s because AI can’t hold a meeting as well as it can solve long division. Communication and emotional intelligence are things AI models cannot replicate—at least for now—maintaining their value in the workplace. A 2025 Stanford University study evaluating how AI will shift valued skills in the workplace found communication skills will grow in importance, while high-wage skills like data analysis and accounting will diminish in value.
Creativity
Sure, you can ask ChatGPT to read the Rolling Stones’ “Sympathy for the Devil” in the manner of William Shakespeare, or even train an algorithm in impressionist art and ask it to turn your wedding photos into Monet paintings. But human creativity extends beyond memorizing knowledge and regurgitating it in different formats. It takes the ability to think differently and push boundaries.
“If you had asked an LLM in 1900, ‘would humans ever be able to fly?’” Frey said, “it would have concluded that there’s no bird that weighs more than 30 pounds that’s able to get off the ground.”
That is why creativity is becoming a critical trait for workers to have. The World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report 2025 also found creative thinking is becoming more important amid AI’s rise. Frey said active discussion and debate—a cornerstone of a college education—is a critical activity to enhance creative thinking.
Resilience
Frey said AI doesn’t quite possess the resiliency to function like a human. It can provide—with the click of a button—a wide range of information, from a slew of complex legal cases to optimized travel itineraries. But it doesn’t do well in environments that are in constant flux, as is the real world.
“An undergraduate textbook will not have changed that much in recent decades,” Frey said. “AI thrives as a tutor in those relatively static environments.”
That means flexibility will hold more currency as AI continues to enhance. The WEF’s 2025 Future of Jobs Report also named resiliency a skill that is rising in importance. And business leaders note its importance in the age of AI, saying it is a required trait to navigate the many changes a business faces amid AI adoption. While AI can help democratize basic information, such as what is found in a typical 101 course textbook, college prepares students to interpret that information for complex environments, according to Frey.
“In professions where you have more volatility where your job changes more day to day, [those jobs] are less likely to be exposed or automated,” he said.
A version of this story was published on Fortune.com on Jan 14, 2026.
More on higher education:
- Harvard admits it was too easy to get A grades, and has vowed a crackdown
- A record number of 18-year-olds are set to graduate into an economy designed against them
- Despite degrees being slammed as ‘useless’ by Gen Z, data shows graduates have had the lowest unemployment rate of anyone for the last 20 years
