[2.5] The End of Education

We explore the state of education just before the rise of AI, compare it to today, and extrapolate into the future.

Sources

• Tyler Jagt, "My Students Can't Read," Chronicle of Higher Education, 2026. 
• NAEP Long-Term Trend Assessment
• Pew Research, "Reading for fun has become less common," 2021.
• James S. Coleman et al., Equality of Educational Opportunity ("The Coleman Report"), US Dept. of Health, Education, and Welfare, 1966
• Kathryn Borman & Monique Dowling, Teachers College Record, 2010.
• Dan Goldhaber, "The Mystery of Good Teaching," Education Next, 2002 Steven Rivkin, Eric Hanushek & John Kain, teacher-effects study, Econometrica, 2005. 
• Xitao Fan & Michael Chen, parental-involvement meta-analysis, Educational Psychology Review, 2001 
• World Bank, "Vietnam's Human Capital: Education Success and Future Challenges," 2020 (PISA science outperformance on low per-pupil spend). 
• OECD, "Does Money Buy Strong Performance in PISA?", PISA in Focus No. 13, 2012 (no score/spending relationship above ~$35k cumulative per-student spend). 
• NCES, Digest of Education Statistics 2023, Table 236.55 (US per-pupil spending, $6,873 → $17,495 real dollars, 1970-71 to 2020-21)
• Boston Globe, 2001 coverage of Harvard grading ("laughing stock of the Ivy League"; 91% of seniors graduating with honors). 
• Harvard Crimson, Oct. 5, 2023 (~79-80% of 2020-21 grades in the A range)
• Anemona Hartocollis, "Harvard Students Skip Class and Still Get High Grades, Faculty Say," New York Times, Oct. 6, 2025. 
• Gallup, confidence-in-higher-education tracking, July 2023 and July 2024 releases (57% in 2015 → 36% in 2023/24; Republican confidence ~56%→~19-20%, Democratic decline much smaller)
• Pew Research, Aug. 2019 (share saying colleges have a negative effect on the country, 26%→38%, 2012-2019, driven almost entirely by Republicans/leaners)
• Challenge Success (Stanford, Denise Pope), Fall 2018 survey
• Mark Galloway, cheating in advantaged-community schools, Ethics & Behavior, 2012
• Stacy Dale & Alan Krueger, "Estimating the Payoff to Attending a More Selective College," NBER WP 7322, Aug. 1999; Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2002. Follow-up: NBER WP 17159, Jun. 2011; Journal of Human Resources, 2014.
• ProPublica & The Chronicle of Higher Education, "The Newest College Admissions Ploy: Paying to Make Your Teen a 'Peer-Reviewed' Author," May 2023.
• Nataliya Kosmyna et al., "Your Brain on ChatGPT," MIT Media Lab, arXiv:2506.08872, 2025. 
• Hao-Ping (Hank) Lee et al., "The Impact of Generative AI on Critical Thinking," CHI 2025, peer-reviewed, n=319. 
• Turnitin AI-detection data, 2023-2026 (>80% AI-written flags: ~3% early 2023 → ~15% early 2026).
• Inside Higher Ed / Generation Lab Student Voice survey, Aug. 2025
• Rose Horowitch, "The Elite College Students Who Can't Read Books," The Atlantic, Oct. 2024. 
• "Hilarius Bookbinder," "The Average College Student Is Illiterate," Persuasion, Mar. 2025. 
• Tyler Jagt, "My Students Can't Read," Chronicle of Higher Education, 2026. 
• NAEP 2024 12th-grade reading assessment, released Sept. 2025 (lowest since assessment began). 
• Erik Brynjolfsson, Bharat Chandar & Ruyu Chen (Stanford Digital Economy Lab), "Canaries in the Coal Mine?," Nov. 2025, ADP payroll data
• Indeed Hiring Lab, entry-level software postings
• 2U, coding-bootcamp partnership shutdown, Dec. 2024.
• Southern New Hampshire University, bootcamp closure, 2023, citing AI adoption.
• World Economic Forum, Future of Jobs Report, 2023 & 2025 
• McKinsey Global Institute, "Skill Shift," 2018 
• Stefan Bauschard, "Education is a Wicked Problem in AI" 
• Brian Miller, "Farewell, Peak Literacy, We Hardly Knew You," Front Porch Republic, Nov. 2023. 
• James Marriott, The New Dark Ages: The Death of Reading and the Dawn of the Post-Literate Society

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