2025 will be a year of hyperchange and navigating in the gray. New technology boasts more opportunity and more risk than ever before. Education leaders are called to create environments alive with possibility and safe from harm. Easy right?
The speed of AI capability improvement makes 2025 the biggest value creation opportunity in history and, simultaneously, it comes with a whole new level of personal, economic, and catastrophic risk.
This fall there have been thousands of sitings of mysterious drones in New Jersey and reported drone swarms over military bases in the US and Europe. Armed drones are widely used in Ukraine and Middle East conflicts. We’re not the only ones worried about more killer drone swarms in 2025–Future of Life Institute recently launched a new site on autonomous weapons announcing the Slaughterbots Are Here. (The Stable Diffusion portrait above offers a hopeful vision as Tom admires his work—the hacked swarm of drones falling into the lake.)
Armed drone swarms are just one of the AI developments to worry about in 2025. Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt has been warning about the risks of recursive learning. “We’re soon going to be able to have computers running on their own, deciding what they want to do,” he said. When the system begins to self-improve, “it may be time to consider pulling the plug.” (See his new book Genesis).
Pre-pandemic, artificial general intelligence appeared to be 80 years away. Then, estimates were revised to 8-10 years away. Now, some think powerful AI is 8-10 months away, and the prospects have freaked out a few Future of Life podcast guests.
The first implication for education in 2025 is that AI literacy and fluency in AI-powered problem-solving should be a new graduation requirement. Second, the new and shared risks make civic and citizenship education more important than ever—we need more public leadership to navigate this transition to life with co-intelligence to address the shifts in public systems.
Superworkers: Experienced Humans + AI Agents
On the opportunity side of the equation, we’re a few months into a new phase of capabilities including AI agents executing tasks and reasoning engines taking on complex questions.
Agents are “an AI system that can take actions to achieve a goal,” says Paul Roetzer, Marketing AI Institute. He outlines the work of organizational leaders for 2025:
Accelerate AI (Agent) literacy: Teach your teams about AI. The fundamentals. The opportunities and obstacles.
Explore and Experiment with AI Agents: There is an opportunity to take a leadership role in the application of AI agents, but it requires being proactive. Start building and testing. Don’t wait for someone else to connect the dots for you and your team.
Integrate AI Agents: Find ways to drive operational efficiency and performance across your organization.
Jaya Gupta says “Service as Software” is the new buzzword…and “it’s emerging as Systems of Agents in sales and marketing, recruiting, engineering, security, operations, IT services, legal, supply chain, logistics, healthcare and financial services.”
Despite Salesforce ads promising “autonomous agents” most of what we’ll see in 2025 will be agents executing tasks with experienced humans in the loop. Widespread white-collar task automation will lead to noticeable job displacement and eliminate some entry-level jobs. College grads in 2025 will face a soft job market with more “experience required” postings…and, in many cases, employers will be looking for sector, role, and tool experience. Recent grads are already losing out to older workers.
Josh Bersin says the new job of leaders “is to help build a company of Superworkers” with “a goal of using AI to increase customer service, scale, quality, and value.” He also sees AI Agents taking a bigger role in 2025 in hiring (what he calls precision talent acquisition) onboarding and professional development.
Experience Grows in Value
Relevant work experience has never been more valuable…and for many harder to get.
Work-based learning (real-world learning, career-connected learning, profession-based learning) has been trending post-pandemic and will gain further momentum in 2025 as the experience gap that Ryan Craig has been warning about becomes more evident as AI automation kicks in.
Powerful experiences develop core, technical, and durable skills and sector context knowledge. They develop what Charles Fadel calls The Drivers: Agency, Identity, Purpose, and Motivation.
Client projects, entrepreneurial experiences, internships, and apprenticeships will become more valuable and more common in 2025. Here are a few specific examples:
The Golden State Pathways Program will kick into high gear in 2025 yielding hundreds of new and updated career academies across California.
Statewide workforce investments like Future Ready Oregon will expand career-connected learning opportunities (high school and postsec) in tech, healthcare, and manufacturing.
More states are supporting apprenticeships (see state policy scan from Apprenticeship for America).
The Pathways Alliance will continue to grow teacher apprenticeship programs.
CAPS Network will add a dozen partner sites featuring professions-based learning experiences and move into middle-grade programming.
Statewide school networks like Success-Ready Students Network (Missouri) and Future of Learning Council (Michigan) will add more real-world learning opportunities in 2025.
P-TECH networks (that combine early college and career-connected learning) like Collegiate Edu-Nation will add and inspire a few dozen more sites in 2025.
US Chamber of Commerce Foundation will add more partner sites hosting Employer Provided Innovation Challenges (EPIC).
With a big investment from ASA, NFTE will expand access to entrepreneurial experiences in 2025 (in and after school).
More schools will use Inkwire and Playlab to frame and conduct community-connected projects.
More colleges will use Riipen to host client projects in 2025 (especially in Canada where RBC made it free).
The use of AI-powered simulations is growing rapidly in corporate learning and development (especially where physical training experiences are expensive and/or dangerous). AI sims were piloted in high school career exploration in 2024 and are likely to expand to several secondary and postsecondary pathway applications in 2025.
It’s not just experience but human connections that matter. A new Raj Chetty study showed that youth outcomes are strongly related to parent employment and social interaction. “Community-level changes in one generation can propagate to the next generation and thereby generate rapid changes in economic mobility.”
As Julia Freeland Fisher often says, “Education is about more than building skills. It’s not only what students know but who they know that unlocks opportunities in life.” in 2025, she thinks we’ll see more models, technology tools, and measures that schools can adopt to ensure that all students have access to social capital.
Better Signals are Imminent
Our new report showed continued growth in credentialing but the majority of issued credentials are currently of low signal value to employers. We also observed that while the number of valuable experiences is growing (as discussed above), they are not well represented by transcripts and resumes. We proposed a taxonomy for capturing and communicating the value of experiences (e.g., USCCF is badging EPIC) and, in some cases, extracting skill credentials from demonstrated capabilities (e.g., LivedX).
In 2025, several school networks/ecosystems will begin to credential client projects, internships and entrepreneurial experiences to better equip learners to tell their stories, and to incentivize work that matters. A few more regions will adopt Learning and Employment Records to facilitate credential sharing in support of enrollment, enlistment, and employment (e.g., Alabama Talent Triad).
AI is Both a Problem and a Solution for Youth Mental Health
Young people face the lasting ramifications of enduring the global pandemic, climate crises, urgent social movements, increased incidents of discrimination and violence, major domestic political shifts, widening economic inequality, and, on top of it all, have borne the brunt of rampant machine learning and AI tests through social networks. They’re growing up in an era of 24/7 online access to information, including increasingly influential social media platforms and trends that have been shown to fuel social comparison and lower self-esteem.
According to The74 “Nearly a third of Gen Z feels that youth mental health challenges are the most pressing issue for their generation, with girls and white children citing the issue more than their peers. When asked about top concerns at schools specifically, the number grows dramatically: 53% said mental health.” Additionally, “approximately 47% of the U.S. population (158 million people) live in a mental health workforce shortage area. The shortage of mental health professionals is particularly prominent in rural areas and economically stressed cities.” 2025 will be a big year in classroom phone bans.
On the flip side, in 2025, AI applications will boost early detection and personalized care. Virtual assistants and chatbots will improve access to low-cost treatment and engagement and AI-created immersive experiences will benefit thousands of people. AI will also help deliver accurate, engaging mental health education at scale. While AI apps pose promise, they come with new risks, and some tragedies have already made headlines.
Personalization Reigns Supreme
Just as the personalization of mental health delivery will improve in 2025, this trend will run across consumer and education trends, fueled by widespread AI implementation.
McKinsey found that 71% of consumers expect personalized interactions from companies and 76% experience frustration when they don’t get it. Chatbots, generative content, and recommendation algorithms make personalizing learning and customer experiences easier than ever. Personalized tutors will get smarter. Meanwhile, we will see rampant use of AI in project co-authoring. Two years ago it was difficult to imagine an entire classroom conducting unique projects, by the end of 2025 tools like Inkwire and PlayLab will make this possibility a reality. These tools will also empower hundreds of new microschools, supercharging the ability to create customized and personalized learning environments.
Decentralize This
In 2025, more political power will shift from the federal level to the states. In education systems, the decline of the federal role (which started after the Great Recession grant programs Race to the Top and I3) will lead to more state leadership over goal setting, assessments, graduation requirements, and accountability systems. Regional workforce and credentialing initiatives will form around distinct outcome frameworks. More decentralized talent data signals a less interoperable future.
However, a few comparability studies could inform AI translation systems in 2025 that would make assessment outcomes and credentials more valuable. Renewed interest in crypto may boost other Web3 technologies including blockchain learner records.
Embrace Hyperchange Through Public Leadership
Technology, economics, politics, and climate are a few of the areas likely to experience hyperchange starting in 2025. With this change will come more opportunities, disruption, and threats than ever before. The aforementioned reconfiguration of big bureaucratic agencies and political realignment at state levels means changes in power, making public leadership and intentional change management structures more important than ever. Leaders and learners around the world have a new imperative to prioritize developing skills in problem-finding, resilience, and agility. It’s a good time to update outcomes frameworks (Portraits of a Graduate, etc.) for the hyperchange around the corner.
Sign up for our What’s Next in Learning 2025 Town Hall on January 16th to hear even more trends and join the conversation.
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