CONCEPT
Education as Jurisdictional Gatekeeping
Abbott's analysis of the dual function performed by professional education: transmitting the knowledge practitioners need and controlling access to the jurisdiction by determining who receives the required credentials.
Educational institutions have always served a dual function in the system of professions: they transmit knowledge and they control jurisdictional access through credentialing. AI has progressively undermined both functions. The knowledge function has been eroded by successive waves of information technology culminating in AI tutoring systems providing personalized instruction at any hour. The credentialing function is losing force as organizations shift from credential-based to capability-based evaluation. Educational institutions must find a new jurisdiction, and Abbott's framework suggests it lies in developing capacities AI cannot replicate: judgment, ethical reasoning, integrative thinking, and the capacity to direct AI-augmented work toward human purposes.
In The You On AI Field Guide
The knowledge function of professional education rested on the scarcity of specialized information. A medical school existed because medical knowledge was not available through other channels; a law school existed because legal reasoning required transmission from those who possessed it. Each technological advance in information access—the library, the textbook, the encyclopedia, the search engine—chipped away