By the time Christian Vivas enrolled in a new artificial intelligence program at Miami Dade College, he had already experimented with using ChatGPT to help him write emails to clients of the creative media studio he owns.
Vivas, 37, said most of his classmates were like him — adults well into their careers looking to learn how to use AI, or use it better. Thanks to his classes, Vivas, who has a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering, has advanced way beyond using ChatGPT. He now employs AI in nearly every aspect of his work: generating images, videos, marketing plans and social media captions.
“It’s integrated very deeply into our business now,” Vivas said.
Christian Vivas completed Miami Dade College’s artificial intelligence certification program to gain skills for the creative media studio he owns in south Florida.
(Courtesy of Miami Dade College)
As generative AI technology is rapidly changing the labor market, employers are increasingly seeking AI skills for positions outside the technology sector, such as in healthcare, hospitality and media.
To keep up, students are looking for ways to boost their AI skills and make themselves more marketable amid growing concerns that AI will replace humans in the workforce. There’s evidence to suggest artificial intelligence may have already replaced some jobs. Entry-level positions are particularly at risk of being replaced by AI, a report from Oxford Economics shows.
A global survey of more than 1,000 large businesses showed 41% expect to reduce their workforces within five years because of AI. But most companies — 77% — also plan to train their employees to “better work alongside AI,” according to the World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs report in January. Last year, the number of online job postings that included generative AI as a desired skill grew 323%, to more than 66,000 from fewer than 16,000, according to a report from the labor analytics company Lightcast.
Colleges are also motivated by these trends: They’re adding AI to their course catalogs, and individual professors are altering lessons to include AI skill building.
Colleges are rushing to add artificial intelligence lessons to their curricula as more employers list AI skills in their job postings.
(Liliana Mora)
Miami Dade College, for example, debuted its artificial intelligence certificate program in 2023, just over a month after ChatGPT was unveiled. The program offers classes in machine learning, ethics and natural language programming, among other courses. Since rolling out the certificate program, the school has added associate and bachelor’s degree programs in applied AI.
“We started developing this idea around the application of AI — how you can apply AI, how can you learn AI at a community college — where it is open to everyone, not just to a few who can get a master’s or PhD,” said Antonio Delgado, vice president of innovation and technology partnerships at Miami Dade College.
In 2022, the college also created Miami Tech Works, an organization that helps tech companies find skilled workers. Recently, more businesses outside tech have reached out to hire people who know how to use AI.
Miami Dade College’s programs have attracted students such as Vicky Cheung, who decided to enroll in the college’s artificial intelligence awareness certificate program in 2024, after she was let go from the Miami hospital where she had worked for more than two decades.
Cheung, who already had a bachelor’s in business and a master’s in health management, was looking into resume-building courses. She believes her AI courses, coupled with her work experience, helped her land her new job analyzing how to improve processes and workflow at a different hospital.
Enrolling in the program showed employers “that I’m trying to find a way to improve my skill sets,” she said.
Schools across the country have announced programs similar to the one at Miami Dade College: courses in artificial intelligence in business settings and minors in AI marketed to students who are not computer science majors. But higher education institutions are not inherently nimble — and the technology is evolving quickly.
Because generative AI is changing so rapidly, there’s no one curriculum or credential schools are using, or can look to, as a guidepost. What these lessons look like and the rules about how students should use AI vary by institution, or even classroom to classroom.
“The problem we have is that AI is changing industries so fast that the textbooks, the curriculum — by the time you get it approved, it’s relevant, but it’s outdated,” said Josh Jones, chief executive of QuantHub, a company that works with schools including the University of Alabama and Emory University to add AI lessons.
There are downsides for using generative AI as well — students can use the technology to cheat on assignments and some studies indicate college students who use AI on assignments are less engaged with their lessons and use it to jettison critical thinking.
Higher education institutions acknowledge the risks, but also the need to prepare for students for the working world.
For Derrick Anderson, who teaches public affairs at Arizona State University and is senior vice president at the American Council on Education, it’s simple: If AI is a tool students will use at jobs, they should learn how to use it in his classroom.
“Because I’m preparing them for the job market, they need to know how to use generative AI ethically, but efficiently and effectively,” Anderson said.
Now, instead of having students write an essay at the end of one of his public affairs courses, Anderson has them produce a video with the help of ChatGPT. One student in Anderson’s class created a video about new technology that mimics the human brain. In the video, the student narrates as an AI-generated image of a model brain spins on the screen.
Previously, one of Anderson’s class assignments required students to write a memo; now, they have to write four different kinds of memos using ChatGPT and describe scenarios where they would be appropriate.
“It’s a fundamentally different exercise that involves a much larger volume of content because content is so much easier to create,” Anderson said.
The students in his classes have used their AI videos and projects in their portfolios when looking for jobs to show they have experience with these programs, even if they lack a specific degree or credential.
Employers are looking for those kinds of demonstrable examples of AI skills from graduates, said Ken Finneran, vice president of human resources at the digital healthcare company eMed. Every department at eMed, from marketing to human resources to finance, uses generative artificial intelligence tools in some way, said Finneran, and the company expects prospective employees to have foundational knowledge of AI.
This story was produced by the Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education.
