Which profession should your child choose in the age of artificial intelligence?

The university preference period, which began on July 22, will continue until August 10. University campuses are currently filled with prospective students and their families. Open days, department presentations, meetings with academics, scholarships, tuition fees, dormitory facilities, double major opportunities…

For me, this preference period has a special significance. After working at a public university for about 35 years and retiring, I moved to a foundation university, and for the first time, I had the opportunity to observe the promotional events organized during the preference period so closely.

I find it extremely valuable for young people to visit universities, attend promotional fairs, talk to professors in the departments they are considering, and gather as much information as possible. After all, we are asking a 17-18-year-old to make a decision within a few weeks that will significantly affect the rest of their life.

However, something caught my attention during these meetings.

The question that candidates and their families are most curious about comes even before tuition fees:

“Professor, will I be able to find a job when I graduate from this department?”

As an academic teaching in the Management Information Systems (MIS) department, when this question is directed at me, I usually explain why MIS graduates have a wide field of work.

Because today, every business, regardless of its size, has to use current technology. Companies have websites, systems where they manage customer information, and enterprise resource planning software where they track purchasing, production, inventory, sales, and accounting processes. They have human resources systems where they monitor employee performance and career development, and business intelligence applications that provide decision support to senior management by analyzing past performance and their position relative to competitors. These systems exist in large companies on a large scale and in small companies on a small scale, but they are definitely there.

Now, artificial intelligence is coming on top of all this.

Even if a company does not develop these systems itself, it has to decide which technology to buy, adapt it to its own business processes, update it, integrate it with other systems, and use the data it obtains in management decisions.

Therefore, companies do not just need people who know technology; they need people who understand how a business works and also know how technology can be used in that business. One of the important advantages of Management Information Systems is that it is located exactly at the intersection of these two fields. We also try to prepare our students for the changing business world by incorporating artificial intelligence applications into our courses.

A young person I met at the open days recently turned everything I just described into a completely different discussion for me.

Usually, candidates come with their families. In fact, most of the time, the mother or father, and sometimes an older brother or sister, asks the questions before the student. That young person had come alone. He said he was thinking of studying MIS, so he was visiting the stands of universities with an MIS department one by one and trying to talk directly to the department professors.

I appreciated him acting so consciously.

Then he asked the question everyone asks:

“Will I be able to find a job when I graduate?”

I explained why MIS graduates would be needed with the reasons I mentioned above.

He listened carefully.

Then, without hesitation, he dropped that familiar question:

“Well, professor, you say that, but soon artificial intelligence will do all these jobs. What will we do?”

I paused for a moment. There was curiosity in his eyes as if to say, 'let's see what you will answer,' and he was smiling faintly. Because according to the general belief he also knew, artificial intelligence would take jobs away from humans and even turn them into slaves.

I thought that a 17-18-year-old thinking about whether he would be unemployed four or five years later, even before starting university, was a heartbreaking reflection of the socioeconomic conditions of the world we live in.

But there was another side to the question.

A young person who hadn't even started university had already realized the transformation that we adults haven't fully grasped yet.

To give him some encouragement, I said:

“Artificial intelligence won't take your job away. Maybe it will take our jobs away. Because most likely, you will be doing jobs today that we don't even know the names of.”

Then I gave an example from my own youth.

When we were at university in the 1980s, there was no such profession as a “Web designer.” It couldn't have existed because the World Wide Web didn't exist yet. But when the internet and the Web started to become widespread in the 1990s, jobs that didn't even have names before emerged. The Management Information Systems department, which provides education on many professions that seem very familiar to us today, such as web designer, e-commerce entrepreneur, social media specialist, search engine optimization specialist, and mobile application developer, could not be found on our university preference lists.

Because those professions hadn't been invented yet.

Our generation created new professions using the technologies brought about by the internet. Today's young people will also create professions that we don't even know the names of today by using artificial intelligence.

The young candidate liked this answer.

He asked with pure curiosity:

“So how will that happen?”

Then, thinking of the quote “A true educator is not one who fills the mind, but one who ignites the inner light,” which expresses the understanding of education that Pythagoras gave to his students for years and which impresses me greatly as an educator, I told him about an approach that Nazlıcan Öney recently explained in an Instagram video and which I also found quite interesting.

According to the observation of Boris Cherny, who led the development of Claude Code at Anthropic, as artificial intelligence tools become more powerful, the boundaries of fields such as engineering, product management, design, and data analysis are increasingly blurring. Thanks to artificial intelligence, a designer can write code, and an engineer can conduct user research.

In other words, what distinguishes employees from each other is increasingly not just their titles, but how they work.

It is possible to think about this new working order through five different employee types.

The first is the “Prototyper,” the experimenter. They constantly come up with new ideas, try, fail, and try again.

The second is the “Builder.” They take a raw idea and turn it into a working, real product.

The third is the “Sweeper,” the simplifier. They clean up the mess that emerges, weed out what is unnecessary, and make the system simpler.

The fourth is the “Grower.” They bring the resulting product to the user, evaluate feedback and data, and develop and grow it.

The fifth is the “Maintainer.” They keep the established system running and ensure it works reliably and sustainably without collapsing while growing.

What is really interesting here is this:

None of these are professions in the way we know them.

An engineer can be a Builder, but they can also be a Grower. A designer can be a Prototyper. A data analyst can be a Sweeper. Even the same person can take on several of these at different times.

Therefore, in a world transformed by artificial intelligence, it seems increasingly likely that the fundamental element distinguishing people from each other will be what they can do using what they know, rather than the profession written on their diplomas.

For example, let's think of a marketing specialist.

In the past, they would prepare their campaign, place their ad, and track the results. Now, if they can analyze customer data themselves with the help of artificial intelligence, group customers according to their behavior, develop different campaigns for each group, and constantly change their strategy according to the results, they are no longer just a marketer. They are also a Grower.

Or let's think of an accountant.

A significant portion of the work done by an accountant who only keeps records can be automated. But if the same accountant uses artificial intelligence to analyze their client's financial data, forecast future cash flow, and suggest alternative strategies to management, they are no longer just someone who maintains the existing system. They are also someone who Builds new solutions.

Nazlıcan Öney summarizes this with a very nice sentence:

“Technical knowledge has become cheap thanks to artificial intelligence, but a person's way of thinking has become expensive.”

I think this sentence tells young people in the university preference period and especially their families something very important.

Do not look for a department that will guarantee a job for your child four years from now.

Because no one can give such a guarantee today.

Four years is a very long time in the age of artificial intelligence.

Some tasks of a profession that is in high demand today may have been largely automated four years later. Conversely, new jobs that we don't even know the names of today may emerge.

Then, the question we should ask in university preferences should not just be “Will a graduate of this department find a job?”

We should also ask, “Does this department give my child the ability to learn new things in a changing world, bring different fields together, solve problems, work with technology, and redefine their own work when necessary?”

Families also have an important duty here.

I see that mothers and fathers sometimes ask more questions than their children at open days. They are worried about their children's future. They don't want them to make the wrong choice. This is extremely understandable.

But the biggest mistake that can be made would be to use our own generation's business world as a measure for our children's future.

We can tell our children which profession to choose. But we don't know what the professions in the world they will graduate into will be.

Millions of people work today in professions that did not exist in our youth. Our children will work tomorrow in professions that do not exist today.

For this reason, the duty of families is not to make choices on behalf of their children, but to raise a young person who can make choices.

The duty of universities is not just to transfer technical knowledge that is valid today to the student. Because some technical knowledge we teach today may become obsolete before our student graduates.

I see the future of Management Information Systems education exactly here. It is important to enable the student to understand both business management and current corporate technologies by utilizing artificial intelligence. But even these are no longer enough. The real issue is to enable the student to make connections between this information, define new problems, produce solutions together with artificial intelligence, and relearn what they have learned when necessary.

Because in the age of artificial intelligence, while technical knowledge becomes cheap, the way of thinking becomes expensive.

I don't know which university that young person I met at the open day will choose.

I don't know if he will choose MIS or not.

But if he can ask the question “If artificial intelligence is going to do these things, what will we do?” before even starting university, I think he already possesses one of the most important qualities necessary to prepare for the future: asking the right question.

I think what families and universities need to do is not to give young people ready-made answers, but to create an environment where they can ask such questions. It is to be a university that teaches how to learn.

Because we don't know which professions will survive in the world ahead.

But we know that there will be a need for people who are curious, questioning, learning, able to use artificial intelligence, and able to rebuild themselves when necessary.

Therefore, I think the most important thing that can be said to mothers and fathers during this preference period is this:

Do not try to choose what job your child will do in the future. Help them become a person who can do jobs that do not yet exist today.