Investor Bill Ackman says recommending college is no longer an easy call, arguing that artificial intelligence and the growth of blue-collar jobs have changed what a degree is worth. Speaking on the Katie Miller Podcast, where he was asked whether he would recommend college, Ackman said the return on investment is not being considered by many students who go, and that an education must be worth the investment to get a job and then some. His verdict on the system was blunt: “The old model of universities needs to be completely rethought.” He did not flatly tell students not to go; he questioned whether the old model still justifies its cost.
The College Question
Ackman’s case rests on two shifts. The first is AI itself: “AI is changing education very rapidly,” he said, and students today can learn almost anything from it, which undercuts the university’s historic role as the gatekeeper of knowledge. The second is the labour market: high in-demand jobs such as electricians and plumbers now offer an alternative path to a four-year degree, one without the debt that comes with it. Taken together, the argument is that the degree’s value was never just the learning, it was the credential and the job it unlocked, and both of those are being repriced at once.
The Student Loan Argument
The second half of his argument is about debt. Ackman said 18-year-old students were not given the same disclosures adults get when signing home mortgages, leaving them with unplanned debt for decades. He noted that a person who declares bankruptcy as a last resort for debt still remains responsible for student loans, and said the rules were originally meant to keep loans payable if people in their 20s declared bankruptcy, not to leave people in their 40s still drowning. His conclusion: “I think we need to change.” The loan point lands separately from the AI point, but both feed the same conclusion: the system was designed for a different economy than the one students graduate into.
Why It Matters
Ackman matters here less as an education expert than as a signal of how the college question is moving into the mainstream. He is a famous Harvard alumnus, and his framing — ROI first, credential second — mirrors the calculation more families are already making as tuition rises and AI tools spread. If universities cannot show that a degree is worth its investment and then some, the alternatives he names, trades and self-directed AI learning, will keep gaining ground whether institutions adapt or not. The open question is what replaces the old model: Ackman calls for a complete rethink, but the podcast comments offer a direction, not a design, and the institutions themselves have yet to answer.
Universities have three broad responses available, and the choice between them is the real story underneath Ackman’s comments. They can shorten courses and cut costs, they can issue skills-based credentials alongside degrees, or they can integrate AI teaching so deeply that the degree becomes a guided path through AI learning rather than a rival to it. Doing nothing is the fourth option, and it is the one the loan debate punishes hardest: every cohort that graduates into debt without a payoff strengthens the political case for reform and weakens the institution’s standing with the next cohort’s parents.
That is the standard Ackman is setting, whether universities accept it or not.
Background
AI’s effect on learning and work has been a running theme through 2026, from Microsoft’s 1,024-agent harness for coding work to AI forecasts beating supercomputers on storm tracks, as AI tools move from assistance to substitution across skilled work.
Source: Benzinga
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