In August 2024, while the technology world fixated on billion-dollar AI startups, something quieter but potentially more consequential was happening in American education.
The National Science Foundation announced a $2.8 million grant to establish the National Applied AI Consortium—an initiative placing community colleges, not elite research universities, at the center of America’s AI workforce strategy.
The idea was deceptively simple: if artificial intelligence is going to reshape every industry from healthcare to manufacturing, then the technicians who implement, maintain and work alongside these systems should come from the institutions that have always served as on-ramps to the American middle class.
Read more at Forbes.
