Photo by Brooke Cagle on Unsplash

Since 1959, hopeful teams of high school students have been competing in the world’s most prestigious mathematics competition: the International Math Olympiad.

The content ranges from extremely difficult algebra and pre-calculus problems to branches of mathematics that may not even be covered at university level. 

The rules are strict. Contestants must be under the age of 20 and not be registered at any tertiary institution.  

But can a three-year-old become the youngest winner of this demanding competition? 

If that three-year-old is a highly advanced large language model (LLM), yes.  

Since OpenAI launched GPT-5 in early August this year, the tech company has started work on an LLM model that can achieve a gold medal in the International Math Olympiad. It’s not an unrealistic aim as the company has already received a gold medal in one of the world’s top programming competitions, the 2025 International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI).  

As the previous winners of these competitions enter higher education, they are very aware that they will continue to compete with AI as they progress in their careers.  

Despite their significant intellect, and the many advantages that the resources available through higher education provide, they face the very real prospect of losing their edge as AI tools become ever more capable.  

In the age of AI, is human capability still enough to guarantee professional success, or are students now better to face the machine head on, developing technical skills that may be replaceable in the near future?

Preparing for a difficult job market 

Graduates are entering an impossibly difficult job market, with a tenth of graduates already changing their career plans due to AI, finds a new Prospects report.  

In a study of nearly 4,000 students and recent graduates, 14 percent said the rise in job automation made them feel pessimistic about their career prospects, while 43 percent already wanted to leave their current employer. 

With this looming threat, students want to be ahead of the curve, and they are demanding hands-on AI-learning from their business school curriculum. “But if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em,” is the attitude of many students in 2025.   

According to a recent GMAC report, 46 percent of candidates class AI as a “must-have” in the curriculum. They also prefer to learn AI through simulations and case studies, not through personalised learning paths.

Students too have embraced AI for wider learning support. 92 percent of students now use AI, says a 2025 Higher Education Policy Institute study, to  explain concepts, summarise articles and generate research ideas. Nearly a fifth have directly included AI-generated text in their work, which has raised questions about regulation.  

And business schools are reacting to this demand. At the start of the year alone, more than three-quarters (78 percent) of business schools had implemented AI into the curriculum, according to GMAC. The greatest focus has been on AI and ethics, as well as AI decision making and practical AI application. 

By gaining these skills and seeking more training, students are seemingly doing everything right, by sufficiently preparing for an AI-focused job market.  

But this focus on AI might just be the thing that makes them replaceable. 

Focusing on the wrong skills 

The 2025 Prospective Student Survey emphasises a disconnect between the skills employers expect and the ones prospective business schools aim to develop. Students too often now undervalue ‘human’ skills in favour of technical ones, the report found.  

But it’s these human skills, such as teamwork, initiative, coachability and emotional intelligence, that employers now look for. Technical skills are still important, but in an increasingly competitive job market – where graduates are competing with machines – they must excel in these human skills.  

“Candidates continue to underestimate the importance of people skills,” said Nalisha Patel, Regional Director, Americas & Europe, at GMAC. “Business schools need to help students understand that these are not ‘nice to have’, they’re dealbreakers. There’s a gap between what students think will get them hired and what does… Schools can help close that gap.” 

GMAC’s annual report showed that employers are more likely than candidates to consider these human skills. While 35 percent of students thought they should be focusing on AI skills, only 26 percent of employers agreed. In contrast, 45 percent of employers thought students should consider initiative, compared to just 30 percent of students. 

Rock and a hard place 

We can hardly blame students for this disconnect. The media is constantly bombarding us with stats and case studies of machines stealing jobs.  

Goldman Sachs predicts up that to 50 percent of jobs could be fully automated by 2045, largely driven by generative AI and robotics. A McKinsey report projects that by 2030, 30 percent of current U.S. jobs could be automated, with 60 percent significantly altered by AI tools.

When it comes to AI, students are very much caught between a rock and a hard place. The rock being a dwindling job market, the hard place being the technology that is progressing faster than any human could.  

It is higher education institutions, then, that must stay in the loop, talking directly to employers and feeding this back into the curriculum.  

“The findings are a clear message to business schools: integrate AI, but don’t sideline human development. Meeting both employer and student expectations is key to remaining relevant and delivering real value,” reflects Patel. 

By, Chloë Lane

Enjoyed this article? You might like this…