Last month, I attended Georgia Tech’s 2026 Spring Symposium—”Skilling, Upskilling, and Reskilling in the Age of AI.” In one of the talks, a speaker drew an analogy back several decades to the transition from horse-drawn carriages to automobiles. The speaker noted—correctly, in my opinion—that although some of the early automobiles were likely weaker than the horse-drawn carriages they were replacing, everyone could see the potential. It did not take long before automobiles largely replaced horse-drawn carriages.
The applications to the current era were obvious: there are careers, technologies, and perhaps even institutions that we will likely look back on as the proverbial horse-drawn carriages of the current era.
During the Q&A, the speaker was asked directly: “Is the four-year degree the horse-drawn carriage of modern education?” The speaker didn’t hedge; the answer was “yes.” The discussion turned to more agile education pathways—online courses, bootcamps, microcredentials, and so on.
I’m pretty sure I heard an audible gasp from the crowd. That’s understandable—the four-year degree is an institution. The idea that it might be a relic on its last legs seems like an existential threat. But I think the analogy is worth unpacking further, because when we really open it up, it offers more than just a threat. It offers three reasons for hope.
The first is the timeline. Looking back, the transition from carriages to cars seems like it happened overnight—but only because we’re seeing the end result. In reality, it took 30 years from the dawn of the automobile before cars outnumbered carriages in New York City. In rural areas, it took even longer.
Where are we in this transition? The four-year degree has been decreasing in relevance for a long time; AI is clearly accelerating it, but the degree remains deeply entrenched. We are still early in this transition—if it happens at all.
The second is that the analogy is more nuanced than it first appears. The automobile didn’t really replace the horse-drawn carriage—the combustion engine replaced the horse. The carriage part remained remarkably unchanged.
The four-year degree serves a massive number of functions beyond the content that is learned. It represents the developmental experience of becoming independent and managing one’s own life in a new, deliberately temporary context. It provides a baseline in civic discourse, and for many, a first experience interacting with a broader, more varied community of peers—what I’ve previously described as a kind of “third place.” It is a gateway to adulthood—at least for those with access.
If the four-year degree is the horse, then this life experience is the carriage: a vehicle that must still be considered, and which colleges may continue to provide even as curricula become more agile and adaptable.
The third is that horse-drawn carriages never really went away—they just became invisible. Why are roads the width they are? Most accounts trace back to the anatomy of horses. The size and width of horses dictated common widths for carriages, from chariots to covered wagons. When cars came along, they needed to fit into a world built around those dimensions—and those constraints propagate to this day. Our road widths, our turning radii, even our vocabulary: “dashboard,” “boot,” “cab,” and “riding shotgun” all date back to the carriage era.
Even if the four-year degree is in its twilight years, it will provide the framework and constraints that govern the next generation of learning and credentialing. We have already seen this in action: significant efforts have been made to translate work experience into traditional Carnegie units so it can be applied toward degree requirements. There is no fundamental reason to translate work experience into the credit-hour system except that by doing so, we open a path into a powerful existing infrastructure.
The idea that the four-year degree may be the horse-drawn carriage of modern education is terrifying to some, but it need not be. The transition will not happen overnight. Whatever replaces the degree will have to fulfill numerous societal roles beyond just content delivery. And the new system—whatever form it takes—will be built on roads that the four-year degree paved.
I think about that reaction from the crowd to the speaker’s question. It was the sound of people imagining a world without something they depend on. But the better question isn’t whether the horse-drawn carriage disappears. It’s how much of the carriage survives in whatever comes next.
History suggests: more than we expect.
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