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By Mike Oates, President & CEO, Hudson Valley Economic Development Corporation
Every few months somebody tells me college is a waste of money. Sometimes it’s a podcast host. Sometimes it’s a successful entrepreneur who dropped out and did fine. Lately it’s people who are convinced artificial intelligence is about to make a diploma worthless.
I understand where it comes from. Tuition is expensive, and families are right to ask what they’re getting for it. But I spend most of my week with the people who do the hiring in this region, and they aren’t buying that argument. Neither am I.
At HVEDC, we work with manufacturers, hospitals, banks, builders, tech companies and hotels across nine counties. When I ask employers what they need, they rarely mention a specific software program. They talk about people who can write a clear email, run a meeting, solve a problem nobody gave them instructions for, and get along with coworkers who see things differently. Those skills don’t come from a weekend online course.
That’s where college comes in. It was never just about memorizing facts for an exam. It’s about learning how to learn. Over several years, students work through hard problems, defend their ideas, take criticism, meet deadlines and work alongside people from very different backgrounds. They write, they present, they fall short and try again, pushed by professors and classmates who expect more of them than they expect of themselves.
The AI argument is the one I hear most now, and I think it gets things backwards. These tools are remarkable. They can draft a memo or build a spreadsheet in seconds. What they can’t do is tell you whether the memo is right, whether the numbers make sense, or whether the decision is fair to the people it affects. Somebody still has to make that call and own it. As routine work gets automated, the jobs left over are the ones that require judgment, and good judgment comes from a broad education: reading, arguing, studying history and science, writing and rewriting. If anything, AI raises the bar.
Our kids also aren’t just competing with the kid down the street. They’re competing with graduates from around the world who are earning degrees and going after the same jobs. This is a bad time to tell a young person to sit it out.
There’s another part of this that doesn’t show up on a salary chart. I serve on the Board of Trustees at Mount Saint Mary College in Newburgh, and one of the things I’ve come to appreciate there is how seriously the college takes service. You see the same thing at Marist, Bard, SUNY New Paltz, St. Thomas Aquinas College, New York Medical College, Mercy and our community colleges. Students tutor in local schools, work in food pantries, help nonprofits and small businesses, and learn that an education comes with an obligation to give something back.
That habit sticks. Years later it’s the reason a young accountant agrees to be treasurer of the Little League, or a nurse volunteers at a free clinic, or a business owner decides to hire locally and sponsor the school fundraiser. Strong local economies are built on people like that. You won’t find it in a quarterly report, but every community in the Hudson Valley depends on it.
College is also, for a lot of people, the first time they really have to figure out who they are. You’re on your own. You meet people from places you’ve never been. You get your first bad grade and have to decide what to do about it. You manage money, time and your own ambitions, usually not very well at first. That’s how adults are made. We need more people who can listen to someone they disagree with and still find a way to work together, and campus life teaches that whether students notice it or not.
None of this lets colleges off the hook. Cost is a real problem. Schools need to keep tuition in check, work more closely with employers, and make sure their programs line up with the jobs that actually exist. Many of ours are doing that, building internships and new programs in fields like healthcare and technology. They should keep going.
But fixing higher education and abandoning it are two very different things. If you’re a parent, an employer or an elected official in this region, encourage the young people around you to keep learning, and support the colleges that make it possible.
The Hudson Valley’s future workforce, and its future community leaders, are sitting in classrooms right now. The degree still matters. I’d argue it matters more than it ever has.
Michael Oates is President & CEO of the Hudson Valley Economic Development Corporation, which serves Westchester, Putnam, Dutchess, Rockland, Orange, Ulster, Sullivan, Greene and Columbia counties. He is a member of the Board of Trustees of Mount Saint Mary College.
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