"Their degrees are already obsolete" -> I don't understand this attitude. Do they expect to have special knowledge after a bachelor's degree? Or do they think that just asking an AI what to do is the way to create better AI and a better future for us humans?
A bachelor's degree is like an extended grade 13. With a master's degree, one can start working independently, or as we jokingly say, "know where to ask and what to kook for!"
College should teach us the basics of how to think critically, how to solve problems, and how to organize our work materials; it should enable us to grow and tackle more academically demanding problems, not a training for a specific job. These are skills that are extremely valuable no matter what the technological advances are. And when you see that, the cost of a college education in the U.S. and some other developed countries is just ridiculous. So I see it as a sign of frustration and disappointment rather than in a literal sense.
It's a depressingly common confusion that the purpose of education is to be stuffed full of facts. If that were the case, then libraries and search engines would already have made us obsolete.
But I do get the frustration with going into huge debt. And we have made obtaining a degree a requirement to get even quite basic jobs now.
