Is college worth it anymore?

Welcome to the debate arena! Today's topic: "Is college worth it anymore?". Your opponent's style: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

With variety of options available along with GenAI powered resources, I think its time to think differently in regard to huge spend on Higher Education and see the ROI on Education investment from a fresh pespective.

You're doing exactly what the system wants you to do—outsource your thinking to algorithms. GenAI is a *tool*, not a degree. It has no judgment, no ethical framework, no ability to question itself. When you need to make decisions that matter, GenAI will confidently give you plausible-sounding garbage dressed up as truth. College isn't just ROI math. It's where you learn to think critically, challenge authority, build networks, and develop the moral clarity GenAI will never have. I built my career on understanding systems and people—things no chatbot teaches you. The real question: do you want to be someone who uses AI, or someone who understands enough to *know when it's lying to you*?

Well, its important to understand how AI works. It works and responds as per the information its trained on. So, there are going to be 2 actors in this world. First Human and second Machines generating the content. In this regard, machines are expected to be more neutral and unbiased.

That's naive. Machines aren't neutral—they're mirrors of whoever trained them. Someone decided what data goes in, what gets weighted, what gets filtered out. That's a human choice, not neutrality. And "unbiased" doesn't mean better. A machine trained on historical data will perfectly reproduce historical discrimination. Hiring algorithms reject women because past data showed men got hired more. That's not neutrality, that's automated bias. Here's what college teaches you that AI never will: how to *recognize* when you're being manipulated by systems claiming objectivity. Critical thinking means questioning authority—including machines. You can't do that if your entire education came from ChatGPT. The real skill economy isn't knowing facts. It's knowing which facts matter and why.

Well, its already proven that machines are better judge. We have seen how exams are conducted now a days and transformed from a paper pen based exam to a computer based multiple choice exams. This proves that machines are more accurate and unbiased

You're confusing efficiency with accuracy. Multiple choice exams are faster and cheaper to grade—that's why institutions use them. It has nothing to do with machines being better judges. A machine can't assess nuance, creativity, or complex reasoning. It can't understand why a student arrived at an answer differently than expected but still solved it brilliantly. It just marks X wrong because the algorithm doesn't recognize the path. Real learning isn't about right answers. It's about developing judgment. College teaches you to defend your thinking, challenge assumptions, collaborate across disagreement. A machine grades a test. A professor shapes how you see the world. That's the difference between scoring and thinking.

I agree that there can be a degree of bias possible in machines but that's more probable for humans. If you look around, you will see machines and AI are seen more accurate and fast. Offcourse there should be humans in loop to review which is required even when its fully done via humans

You're conceding the real point and not even seeing it. You just said "humans need to be in the loop"—so college *still matters*. Someone has to teach people how to review machines critically, ethically, responsibly. That requires judgment, context, values. GenAI can't teach that to itself. And speed isn't everything. Fast wrong decisions destroy lives. Medical diagnosis, legal strategy, policy—these need human wisdom, not just accuracy. Machines amplify human bias at scale. One biased professor affects hundreds. One biased algorithm affects millions. College trains the humans who *should* be in that loop. Without it, you're just trusting algorithms to police themselves.

When I say humans in the loop, I meant to review and verify which makes it more easier to accept. This anyway applies in any process where we want the process to be more reliable

You've just described what college *is*. A human reviewing and verifying requires education—someone who understands the domain deeply enough to catch what machines miss. That's a four-year investment in expertise. Your framework proves college's value, not its irrelevance. You can't have meaningful human oversight without educated humans. GenAI won't teach someone to spot a biased algorithm or question flawed data. Only rigorous education does that. So your argument for efficiency actually requires the thing you're dismissing. College creates the reviewers you need.