Kentucky families are shelling out up to $7,000 a semester for in-state tuition at public universities — and that's before room, board, and fees — while most students receive no formal training in the artificial intelligence tools already transforming the job market they'll enter.
More than 100,000 students will attend Kentucky's eight public universities this fall, according to the Cincinnati Enquirer, and the price tag varies wildly. The University of Kentucky, the state's largest, is also its priciest: nearly $7,000 per semester for in-state undergrads and close to $18,000 for out-of-state students. The University of Louisville follows at just under $7,000 per semester for Kentucky residents. Kentucky State University, the smallest and a historically Black university, offers the cheapest rate at just over $4,300 per semester for in-state students.
Meanwhile, a Microsoft survey of 3,345 respondents across K-12 and higher education found that 92% of students and education leaders have used AI for school-related purposes — but 77% of students reported receiving no formal AI training. Fifty-three percent of educators said the same. Students are using the tools in the shadows, Forbes reported, while universities debate whether AI belongs in the classroom at all.
The result is not less AI use, but less thoughtful use — a gap that matters when families are paying thousands per semester for credentials that may or may not hold value in a few years.
There are exceptions. At the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, professor Dijo Alexander teaches an applied AI course in the Lubar College of Business where students build an AI-first potato chip company by the second week — creating the brand, writing its story, designing a logo, composing a jingle, and producing a video. The exercise gives students a low-risk way to explore what AI can do before applying the tools to forecasting, operations, and client work.
Alexander frames it plainly: "This is a business class where we will help you look through an AI lens." His students are not training as machine learning engineers. They are learning how AI changes marketing, finance, operations, and management. He avoids the jargon around generative AI, focusing instead on what he calls verbalization — explaining what you want, supplying context, and judging whether the result is useful. These are extensions of writing, reasoning, and communication, not technical novelties.
MBA student Nick Stricharchuk, a former English major, makes the point with a typewriter analogy: "No one was looking at the typewriter going, 'Why haven't you written me the great American novel yet?'" The tool does not choose the problem, supply judgment, or accept responsibility. The person using it still does.
Alexander's students move from the potato chip exercise to real business problems, including a project on food demand in UWM's dining operations that led to work on forecasting, waste reduction, and external business applications. Some students have taken prototypes back to their employers and found themselves presenting to senior executives ahead of schedule.
"You cannot outsource understanding," Alexander said. AI can collect information, evaluate options, and build a prototype. It cannot decide whether the result makes sense or serves the client.
The question for Kentucky families — and families nationwide — is whether the tens of thousands of dollars they pour into public universities will buy that kind of practical training, or just a seat in a lecture hall where the most important technology of their lifetime goes untaught.
