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Long live the Liberal Arts

On the bright side, as AI threatens to make the value of technical skills questionable, it’s a shot at freedom for all those reluctantly aspiring engineers forced into IIT tuition factories in Kota, often driven to suicide by ambitious and clueless parents.

No one’s planning their lives thinking of getting a raise every year and changing designations. The youth today are more cynical, but also wiser; forced to reimagine their futures, they know life revolves around money; but they’d rather go to work happy.

Written by: Leher Kala

4 min readMar 8, 2026 07:16 AM IST First published on: Mar 8, 2026 at 07:16 AM IST

Among the many upheavals concurrently occurring on Earth is that artificial intelligence (AI) is allegedly rewriting the future of work. Will we be contending with the terrifying new reality that computer systems will take over coveted careers in software engineering, leaving the brightest students twiddling their thumbs? Or, is the buzz around AI merely a convenient justification for layoffs? The answer, most likely, lies somewhere in between — AI use is increasing, but a Terminator-like situation where machines are in charge is still really far away.

On the bright side, as AI threatens to make the value of technical skills questionable, it’s a shot at freedom for all those reluctantly aspiring engineers forced into IIT tuition factories in Kota, often driven to suicide by ambitious and clueless parents. In India at least, we’ve been a brutally optimisation oriented society — getting the best ROI means studying specifically those subjects which improves one’s financial prospects. That’s life. An understandable desire for upward mobility means what one wants to do generally comes second to what one has to do. Since it’s turning out that going forward, the money doesn’t necessarily lie in hard skill degrees — realistically, getting rich will require a combination of tech expertise and an education in the humanities — it’ll be a welcome relief for many that their work life can expand to include softer interests. There’s something to cheer that studying Literature, Philosophy and History will no longer be written off with contemptuous scorn because the demand for expertise in the social sciences will rise.

In our heads, when we think about the university experience, the engineering student is gloomily grinding away over complicated Maths formulas while the liberal arts major is dreamily reading Crime and Punishment under a leafy tree in a college lawn. Popular culture supports this reductive fallacy; for example, in the eminently watchable romcom Notting Hill, the protagonist is the quintessential English major; a self-deprecating, struggling underachiever who runs a niche bookstore. Predictably, the finale reveals what most of us want from life — a relaxing afternoon with a book in a beautiful garden, in the presence of a loved one. There is something idyllic, even enchanted, about savouring verse, which is maybe why it isn’t taken seriously. And indeed, the cultivation of the mind, or developing perspective through examining the past has never been considered the surefire route to CEO.

It’s true, there are unlikely to be recruiters breaking down the door after one graduates from studying classical literature of the 15th century, but by all accounts, coders today feel similarly bereft and anxious about employment too. Perhaps, the reordering of professional hierarchy toppling STEM from its exalted, numero uno position will allow students to take a broader view of life, and the world at large will have to abandon the prevailing, strictly utilitarian attitude to education. Two problems for the humanities are that writing better, or thinking more deeply doesn’t have immediate, quantifiable benefits; and, the notional timeframe for success has shortened. A lot of this has to do with seeing random “influencers” online (whom we’d like to write off as two bit flash-in-the-pans but that’s not necessarily true).

People in their 20s with questionable talent (but with grand chutzpah) are holding forth on Instagram and YouTube on everything from crypto to fashion to trading, working out their own hours and their own terms, and making money off their followers. How long this lasts is a different matter, but the very fact that this is a viable option has rendered the traditional career ladder obsolete. No one’s planning their lives thinking of getting a raise every year and changing designations. The youth today are more cynical, but also wiser; forced to reimagine their futures, they know life revolves around money; but they’d rather go to work happy.

The writer is director, Hutkay Films

# artificial intelligence