Get Up and Get Out: Educating for an AI-Driven World

The genie is out of the bottle and will never go back. The AI genie that is. Everything, these days seems is all about AI. New releases come out weekly. AI is taking jobs. Generative AI is learning and doing more and more. It’s truly mind-boggling and it won’t stop.

As an adjunct professor at the VCU Robertson School of Communication teaching “Storytelling with AI”, I see students almost frozen in the fire-hose of information about AI and how it will affect their future.

• CNBC – “AI puts the squeeze on new grads looking for work” (Nov 15, 2025)

• Fast Company – “Companies replaced entry-level workers with AI.” (Feb 4, 2026)

• New York Magazine / Intelligencer – “What Is Gen Z Supposed to Do When AI Takes Entry-Level Jobs?” (Nov 12, 2025)."

Headlines like these are enough to make any rising college graduate nervous. Headlines like these are also enough to make any college recruiter nervous. What’s the incentive of getting a college degree when AI is wiping out entry level jobs in broad strokes (if you believe all the negative news headlines)? In my last year at the VCU Brandcenter, I had three young advertising students tell me they almost skipped grad-school all together: “Why pay all that money when AI is going to take our jobs anyway?” Good question. No, a great question.

There is no doubt that AI is changing the future workplace. We need to accept this as a given (remember, the genie is out). But I tell my students that AI itself won’t take your job, but the person who knows how to use AI to increase their value in the workplace will. Except for a few notable exceptions, this thought process is industry-agnostic. The big challenge for educators, after making a grand statement like that, is creating a curriculum that can achieve that goal.

We need to get out of our offices and into the field to find out what the professional needs are now and in the future for our graduating students.

This is where we, as educators, need to get up and get out. We need to get out of our offices and into the field to find out what the professional needs are now and in the future for our graduating students. We must do this so that we can create curricula that make our graduates best able to meet these new needs and make them more valuable to potential employers. What tools do the students need to know? What is their AI strategy? What problems do our graduates need to solve for the employers of future? What does the (insert your industry here) industry need our students to know? What are the new job titles and roles that will need to be filled?

For us, it’s go time. We can’t wait for research papers to be published. We can’t wait for grants to come in. Things are changing too fast. It’s time to get out.

In my humble opinion, we need to teach students how to strategically use AI to amplify their talents, not replace it. We need to teach our students to view AI as an assistant to increase their value to a potential employer. In many cases, this type of student will be teaching their future employer about the use of AI as a strategic amplifier versus the other way around.

We (in academia) also need to stop looking at AI as “cheating”, but as another tool that can be very helpful and valuable if used fairly and properly (I understand, however, there are a lot of layers to the “cheating” statement). I was stunned at how little my students knew about AI and generative AI. But if you think about it, these young people have been taught for the last several years that if you use AI you are cheating. Taken in that light, the lack of AI knowledge makes sense. We need to change this mindset.

In this challenging environment, the Media and AI Initiative is perfectly timed and placed. With communication and media at its core, the initiative provides a meeting place for professionals and educators, artists and technologists and researchers and practitioners to identify strengths, weaknesses and opportunities as we move deeper and deeper into the AI-driven world. These discussions will lead educators to creating more “just in time” curriculum for our students and make VCU graduates more valuable to the professional world upon graduation. The Initiative will also provide professionals a clear point of contact to express their employee needs now and in the future. We are lucky to have this initiative at VCU.

By Scott Witthaus

Fellow, M+AI

AI Disclosure:

No AI was used in the writing or editing of this post.

Image Source: Google Gemini.