By Matthew Hersh
As Princeton University welcomed a new class of students last week, President Christopher L. Eisgruber urged them to resist the pressure to rush through their college years in pursuit of a degree, a job, or other markers of success.
Instead, he encouraged the Class of 2030 and other incoming students to embrace the process of learning itself, including at a time when artificial intelligence and other technologies are making it increasingly easy to bypass that process.
“Give yourself permission to savor the experiences and the ideas that make this campus magical,” Eisgruber said during the University’s annual Opening Exercises on August 30. “Linger and reflect, because it matters profoundly what you gain along the way.”
In the address, “What You Learn Along the Way,” Eisgruber argued that the value of a liberal arts education lies partly in its ability to prepare students for a future that cannot be predicted.
“Human advantage often comes from learning things without knowing why or how they will be useful,” he said.
The availability of AI tools, he said, could encourage students to take shortcuts that eliminate some of the intellectual work that makes education valuable.
“The easy availability of AI tools may tempt us to skip the journey that makes learning possible,” Eisgruber said, adding that the temptation to substitute summaries for deeper engagement with ideas “is nothing new.”
“So how can we know which knowledge or skills will be most useful in a world where technology changes with dazzling and dizzying speed?” he asked. “The honest answer is that we do not know.”
That uncertainty, Eisguber said, is why students should approach education from a broad standpoint, instead of narrowly preparing for their first jobs.
“At Princeton, we want your education to equip you not only to succeed at your first jobs, but also to become leaders many years from now in a world far different from the one we now inhabit,” he said.
The University is simultaneously investing heavily in technological fields. Its New Jersey AI Hub, launched with state and private-sector partners, is intended to advance artificial intelligence research, ethical AI, innovation, and workforce development. Princeton is also constructing Eric and Wendy Schmidt Hall, which will house the Department of Computer Science and related programs.
The open exercises underscored the new institutional era Eisgruber has discussed for more than a year. In his annual “State of the University” letter in February, he wrote that a decade of “mission-driven growth” was giving way to a period defined by “steadfast focus on core priorities.” The University has expanded its student body, financial aid, academic programs, faculty, and campus facilities over the past decade, but Eisgruber said lower expectations for long-term endowment returns will require Princeton to operate more efficiently and make difficult budgetary choices.
“We will continue to evolve, but in the future it will more often have to do so through efficiency and substitution rather than addition,” he wrote.
The shift comes as many of the major construction projects launched during Princeton’s period of rapid growth have been completed or are nearing completion. Eisgruber wrote that the University will continue to invest in its campus and academic programs, but “more slowly in the years to come.”
In a reference to C.P. Cavafy’s poem “Ithaka,” which President William G. Bowen referenced at an Opening Exercises ceremony 45 years ago, Eisgruber told the new students that their Princeton experience should not be measured primarily by its endpoint.
“It is not the degree you will earn, nor your post-graduation career prospects, it is not the endpoint, it is not Ithaka,” he said. Instead, he described the Princeton experience as a “marvelous, challenging, bewildering, sometimes uncomfortable and sometimes awesome journey.”
“That journey,” he said, “will be Princeton’s most precious gift to you.”