Charles Jones on AI and the economy; Hollis Robbins on higher ed not leading AI; Peter Diamandis on lower ed not leading AI; Erik Brynjolfsson and others on AI displacing some young workers
I think Arnold, and readers, would find the incredible The AI Daily Brief podcast useful - it's 30 or so minutes a day, every day, with 5-10 minutes of headline news and a main story. I've learned a ton from listening to it. Highly recommended! Lots of good skill tips
That's very interesting about where the Internet arose versus AI. The Internet came out of a collaboration between the DoD and the universities, and the web itself came out of CERN, a research center highly connected with the academy. Google itself is a private company, but its core technology for web searching is the Page rank, which came out of work Larry Page did at Stanford.
I learned about the Internet because I attended an event at Furman University as a kid and encountered a professor excitedly talking about Gopher, a predecessor of the web. I learned more about the web as an undergraduate CS student because Clemson used Internet networking for all of its machines, and because Prof. Harold Grossman encouraged me and the other students to learn about the web from both sides--both from installing a web browser on our personal machines to access our homework assignments, and in my case by installing a web server for others to use. The professors were part of the revolution and were teaching their students to use it so we'd be prepared for the future.
AI is a different story. The breakthrough technology was the new LLMs based on the transformer architecture, but universities could not match Google's ability to run the trials and experiments necessary to get the new LLMs to work well. I'm not close enough to it to be sure, but it seems like the new AI technology predominantly started in private companies, especially Google. (Google then lost some of its top AI technologists as they left for other companies.)
Before the AI breakthrough, there was also the breakthrough in translation of natural languages (e.g. French to English). It's not my area, but a researcher in the area I spoke to was demoralized about the conferences because Google kept blowing everyone else away. I asked why, and they said it's because Google has a big database based on the web, and academics couldn't afford that big of a database or that big of a compute installation to crawl and use that much data.
You can see why the academy would react differently to AI than to the Internet. When you're a professor and you and your friends are part of giant DARPA grants to build out the Internet, you're naturally inclined to show it to students and to encourage them to also join that same party. As the years go by, all those people you brought in will still be there and will be part of your network.
On the other hand, if you're not at a party, yourself, then it's much less attractive to push other people into it. You'd prefer it all to just go away.
Hollis Robbins provides much useful and interesting information. And I generally respect her work enough to be bothered to question three of her claims, specifically about federal funding, market failure, and forming new generations.
Robbins moans a lot about federal funding changes threatening universities’ ability to keep the lights on. But when we look at the actual federal budget tables ( see table 15.1, function 502 discretionary Higher Education at about page 16: https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/ap_15-1_fy2027.pdf ), we can see the inundation of the credentialing cartel with borrowed money proceedds apace, with $30,400 million down the drain in FY25, another $30,533 million circling in FY26 and $36,350 million proposed for FY27. Positively treasonous if you ask me given the national debt. Institutions that can’t keep the lights on absent such massive handouts really maybe ought to turn their lights out. And who, with a straight face, can even suggest they would be missed? Can anyone think of a memorable novel produced by a US college graduate this century? A painting? I can’t even think of a movie but then again I don’t watch many. If we want culture maybe we really ought to be thinking about looking elsewhere.
Second, Robbins claims that universities were founded to address a market failure. To be pedantic, historically this is completely false. US universities emerged from religious competition and local boosterism rather than a governmental attempt to correct an economic inefficiency. While some founders, like the first president of Bowdoin College, declared their institutions were "founded and endowed for the common good," the financial reality often contradicted this. Early colleges relied heavily on tuition fees and private donations, including funds derived from slavery, to survive. They operated more like private enterprises than public utilities, with many selling credentials to anyone who could pay. Modern proponents of the market failure argument suggest that because education generates positive externalities—benefits to society such as an informed citizenry and technical innovation—the free market would underprovide it if left entirely to private transactions. One reads Adam Smith claiming state funding was justified because an educated populace promoted domestic tranquillity and improved societal judgment. Ha ha ha. Frederic Bastiat, on the other hand, argued that government intervention often creates social costs that outweigh the benefits of correcting market imperfections. They suggest that state involvement can lead to inefficiency, lethargy among educators, and a misalignment of resources, as seen in the modern critique of administrative bloat and the decoupling of costs from value. Bingo for Bastiat.
Finally, Robbins claims universities are “responsible for forming the next generation of young people.” Dr. Kling has also written about how formative his Swarthmore seminars were and how this experience should be part of the student experience at universities. One need not strain oneself to imagine countless effective alternatives that don’t rely upon massive government handouts. Indeed, Against the wisdom of a medieval book, The Imitation of Christ, is probably the best antidote to all the maladaptive formation going on in US universities. Pope Benedict XVI explicitly endorsed the book during an August 2006 General Audience, referring to it as that "golden text of spirituality." Yet, as far as I can see, it is not required reading at any US Catholic university. Which tells you something about nominally Catholic universities.
At any rate, I will not direct the following quotes to anyone other than myself for I stand most in need of reminding of them:
“Every man naturally desires knowledge; but what good is knowledge without fear of God? Indeed a humble rustic who serves God is better than a proud intellectual who neglects his soul…”
“Shun too great a desire for knowledge, for it in it there is much fretting and delusion. Intellectuals like to appear learned and called wise. Yet there are many things the knowledge of which does little or no good to the soul…”
“Neglect of things which are profitable and necessary and undue concern with those which are irrelevant and harmful, are great folly.”
And on and on.
One suspects that if more parents strived more towards the ideal of say a William Godwin, the demand for universities would subside even more. Godwin home schooled his daughter, Mary Shelley, the acclaimed author of Frankenstein, through a rigorous, intellectual home-schooling model that defied the gender norms of the early 19th century. He provided her with a broad curriculum including ancient and modern history, literature, mythology, and the Bible, alongside practical lessons in art, French, and Latin. He published her early literary works and he immersed her among many wise people. Similarly, Dr. Kling used to write about his proposals prioritizing personal education, looking to letters of recommendation and introductions from a faculty network as a pathway to placement, and the separation of instruction and accreditation, allowing an independent entity to handle grading and certification. The nation can no longer afford the status quo: there are many such alternatives that might indeed prove superior were people left alone to pursue and develop them. And AI can help.
I didn't come close to getting te the end but a couple things:
I'm not sure the point of "credentialing cartel." Are you suggesting something would improve without credentialing?
The $30b/yr you mention undercuts your apparent intent, if you put it in proper context. Research funding is over $100b/yr. A significant cut there has the potential of swamping whatever happens with financial aid.
While there are no doubt some negative externalities, we don't provide student financial aid "to keep the lights on." It is so more can attend college. A significant portion of schools would continue to exist in the absence of financial aid but way less students would be attending.
I don't get your point about novels. Plenty of less memorable work is immensely worthwhile.
stu, some times I think you're too credulous. Or maybe not cynical enough. The stated purpose of financial aid is so more people can attend college. But it also "keeps the lights on" at institutions that employ people in every congressional district in the country. I would be cynical if a legislator with auto industry support pushed for "transportation aid": grants and below-market loans to buy a car. Or if someone on the religious right pushed for money to save "historical and architecturally important churches."
“However, young workers in AI-exposed occupations are increasingly falling behind their less-exposed peers. Employment among workers ages 22–25 in highly AI-exposed occupations now stands about 19% below where it would be if it had kept pace with employment among similarly aged workers in less-exposed occupations.”
I’m happy to take the data at face value as to the changes in the economy.
But the claim that “*young workers* in AI-exposed occupations are increasingly falling behind” is nonsense.
Less employment in those industries is textbook “creative destruction”.
But in no sense does it mean the workers not employed in those jobs are “falling behind”. Or that those who ARE employed in those jobs are, either.
It is much, much easier even for young workers actually displaced (fired) to find employment in other, growing, at least as lucrative jobs.
If it were skilled older workers who were being put out of work and no longer employable near the wages they were used to, that would be one thing.
“Young Buggy Whip workers falling behind” would have made just as much (non)sense.
"It is much, much easier even for young workers actually displaced (fired) to find employment in other, growing, at least as lucrative jobs."
I think you are right to question the "AI-exposed" claim but more generally, things have significantly deteriorated for recent college grads. Their unemployment rate is rather high.
Texas appears to be leading the way in limiting classroom screen time for students in k-12. Is that a bad thing? As parents, we say no and wholeheartedly support embracing pencils and paper over laptops. To interact productively with AI, one must first learn the prerequisites like critical thinking and the 3Rs. For young learners, cognitive offloading through AI is a trap, not a panacea.
If the chatbot is to be believed, from January to August 2025, approximately 115,000 people had their Social Security checks garnished for defaulted student loans, a figure that represents a dramatic increase from just six people in 2000 and roughly double the count from the previous year. Historical data shows the number of beneficiaries facing forced collections surged from 6,200 in 2001 to 192,300 in 2019 before pandemic-era pauses were implemented. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau estimates that about 452,000 borrowers aged 62 and older who are likely receiving Social Security benefits have defaulted on their loans and remain at risk of garnishment.
Overall, as of July 2026, approximately 9.5 million federal student loan borrowers are in default, representing a record high. This figure accounts for $233.3 billion in unpaid debt, which is roughly 20% of all federal student loan borrowers.
The number of defaulted borrowers has more than doubled from 5.3 million in March 2025, following the end of pandemic-era payment pauses and the termination of the SAVE Plan. During the first year of the current administration (2025), an estimated 3.6 million new borrowers fell into default, averaging one new default every 9 seconds. Approximately 4.2 million borrowers defaulted between April 2025 and March 2026 alone, with millions more still delinquent and at risk of entering default.
This current level of default significantly exceeds the pre-pandemic baseline of 7.7 million borrowers recorded in December 2019.
And the university cartel’s strategy of graduating students with weak AI skills is going to make this better?
One might reasonably doubt so.
And that is on top of the growing public perception that the cartel is not fixing itself:
“In the new survey, majorities across all major demographic groups share the view that the U.S. higher education system is going in the wrong direction. But some groups are more likely than others to say this. For example, adults who have a four-year college degree are somewhat more likely than those without a college degree to express this view (74% vs. 69%).
Similarly, 77% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents say the higher education system is going in the wrong direction, compared with a smaller majority (65%) of Democrats and Democratic leaners. In both parties, these shares have gone up by at least 10 percentage points since 2020 – and the gap between Republicans and Democrats has narrowed.“
The cartel can only be fixed from the inside, not by outside interlopers. But they have no internal incentives for reform. That, however, readily can be fixed by eliminating tax exemptions for education and eliminating donations to the cartel as a tax deduction.
The Trump administrations efforts to promote competition with the credentialing cartel by lifting regulatory oppression directed at potential skills-based pathway competitors such as apprenticeships, professional certificates, micro-credentials, boot camps, and industry certifications have mostly been of the cheer-leading sort without achieving the volume necessary to be considered a substantive outcome. From 2014 to 2024, the number of registered apprentices grew by 65%, rising from approximately 410,000 to 678,000. By 2024, there were about 680,000 active apprentices nationwide, representing an 88.45% increase since 2015 when participation was roughly 359,000. That is a fraction of where we would be in a free market uninfluenced by the credentialing cartel’s outsize rent-seeking influence. Jettisoning the cartel’s tax advantages would go a long way to producing healthier economic growth as well as maybe improving fertility. How many children do you think all of those millions of people in default on their student loans are having?
Good piece by Hollis Robbins. With any luck, in a few years we'll be talking about the healthcare sector of the U.S. economy facing the sames challenges that higher ed is today.
I remember professors lecturing us about slide rules being better than calculators. The reasoning being that slide rules force you to keep track of the order of magnitude of your answer. With calculators it's too easy to punch in numbers and just write down the 'answer' without knowing how far off it was. The first people to buy calculators were the ones that were flunking out. It didn't help.
As a teacher I saw the same thing. Often students would write down a wildly wrong answer and have no idea how far off it was. When I asked, they showed me the calculator result. I tried not to laugh.
I use a calculator. I still have my grandfather's slide rule. I keep it to remind me.
I think Arnold, and readers, would find the incredible The AI Daily Brief podcast useful - it's 30 or so minutes a day, every day, with 5-10 minutes of headline news and a main story. I've learned a ton from listening to it. Highly recommended! Lots of good skill tips
That's very interesting about where the Internet arose versus AI. The Internet came out of a collaboration between the DoD and the universities, and the web itself came out of CERN, a research center highly connected with the academy. Google itself is a private company, but its core technology for web searching is the Page rank, which came out of work Larry Page did at Stanford.
I learned about the Internet because I attended an event at Furman University as a kid and encountered a professor excitedly talking about Gopher, a predecessor of the web. I learned more about the web as an undergraduate CS student because Clemson used Internet networking for all of its machines, and because Prof. Harold Grossman encouraged me and the other students to learn about the web from both sides--both from installing a web browser on our personal machines to access our homework assignments, and in my case by installing a web server for others to use. The professors were part of the revolution and were teaching their students to use it so we'd be prepared for the future.
AI is a different story. The breakthrough technology was the new LLMs based on the transformer architecture, but universities could not match Google's ability to run the trials and experiments necessary to get the new LLMs to work well. I'm not close enough to it to be sure, but it seems like the new AI technology predominantly started in private companies, especially Google. (Google then lost some of its top AI technologists as they left for other companies.)
Before the AI breakthrough, there was also the breakthrough in translation of natural languages (e.g. French to English). It's not my area, but a researcher in the area I spoke to was demoralized about the conferences because Google kept blowing everyone else away. I asked why, and they said it's because Google has a big database based on the web, and academics couldn't afford that big of a database or that big of a compute installation to crawl and use that much data.
You can see why the academy would react differently to AI than to the Internet. When you're a professor and you and your friends are part of giant DARPA grants to build out the Internet, you're naturally inclined to show it to students and to encourage them to also join that same party. As the years go by, all those people you brought in will still be there and will be part of your network.
On the other hand, if you're not at a party, yourself, then it's much less attractive to push other people into it. You'd prefer it all to just go away.
Hollis Robbins provides much useful and interesting information. And I generally respect her work enough to be bothered to question three of her claims, specifically about federal funding, market failure, and forming new generations.
Robbins moans a lot about federal funding changes threatening universities’ ability to keep the lights on. But when we look at the actual federal budget tables ( see table 15.1, function 502 discretionary Higher Education at about page 16: https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/ap_15-1_fy2027.pdf ), we can see the inundation of the credentialing cartel with borrowed money proceedds apace, with $30,400 million down the drain in FY25, another $30,533 million circling in FY26 and $36,350 million proposed for FY27. Positively treasonous if you ask me given the national debt. Institutions that can’t keep the lights on absent such massive handouts really maybe ought to turn their lights out. And who, with a straight face, can even suggest they would be missed? Can anyone think of a memorable novel produced by a US college graduate this century? A painting? I can’t even think of a movie but then again I don’t watch many. If we want culture maybe we really ought to be thinking about looking elsewhere.
Second, Robbins claims that universities were founded to address a market failure. To be pedantic, historically this is completely false. US universities emerged from religious competition and local boosterism rather than a governmental attempt to correct an economic inefficiency. While some founders, like the first president of Bowdoin College, declared their institutions were "founded and endowed for the common good," the financial reality often contradicted this. Early colleges relied heavily on tuition fees and private donations, including funds derived from slavery, to survive. They operated more like private enterprises than public utilities, with many selling credentials to anyone who could pay. Modern proponents of the market failure argument suggest that because education generates positive externalities—benefits to society such as an informed citizenry and technical innovation—the free market would underprovide it if left entirely to private transactions. One reads Adam Smith claiming state funding was justified because an educated populace promoted domestic tranquillity and improved societal judgment. Ha ha ha. Frederic Bastiat, on the other hand, argued that government intervention often creates social costs that outweigh the benefits of correcting market imperfections. They suggest that state involvement can lead to inefficiency, lethargy among educators, and a misalignment of resources, as seen in the modern critique of administrative bloat and the decoupling of costs from value. Bingo for Bastiat.
Finally, Robbins claims universities are “responsible for forming the next generation of young people.” Dr. Kling has also written about how formative his Swarthmore seminars were and how this experience should be part of the student experience at universities. One need not strain oneself to imagine countless effective alternatives that don’t rely upon massive government handouts. Indeed, Against the wisdom of a medieval book, The Imitation of Christ, is probably the best antidote to all the maladaptive formation going on in US universities. Pope Benedict XVI explicitly endorsed the book during an August 2006 General Audience, referring to it as that "golden text of spirituality." Yet, as far as I can see, it is not required reading at any US Catholic university. Which tells you something about nominally Catholic universities.
At any rate, I will not direct the following quotes to anyone other than myself for I stand most in need of reminding of them:
“Every man naturally desires knowledge; but what good is knowledge without fear of God? Indeed a humble rustic who serves God is better than a proud intellectual who neglects his soul…”
“Shun too great a desire for knowledge, for it in it there is much fretting and delusion. Intellectuals like to appear learned and called wise. Yet there are many things the knowledge of which does little or no good to the soul…”
“Neglect of things which are profitable and necessary and undue concern with those which are irrelevant and harmful, are great folly.”
And on and on.
One suspects that if more parents strived more towards the ideal of say a William Godwin, the demand for universities would subside even more. Godwin home schooled his daughter, Mary Shelley, the acclaimed author of Frankenstein, through a rigorous, intellectual home-schooling model that defied the gender norms of the early 19th century. He provided her with a broad curriculum including ancient and modern history, literature, mythology, and the Bible, alongside practical lessons in art, French, and Latin. He published her early literary works and he immersed her among many wise people. Similarly, Dr. Kling used to write about his proposals prioritizing personal education, looking to letters of recommendation and introductions from a faculty network as a pathway to placement, and the separation of instruction and accreditation, allowing an independent entity to handle grading and certification. The nation can no longer afford the status quo: there are many such alternatives that might indeed prove superior were people left alone to pursue and develop them. And AI can help.
I didn't come close to getting te the end but a couple things:
I'm not sure the point of "credentialing cartel." Are you suggesting something would improve without credentialing?
The $30b/yr you mention undercuts your apparent intent, if you put it in proper context. Research funding is over $100b/yr. A significant cut there has the potential of swamping whatever happens with financial aid.
While there are no doubt some negative externalities, we don't provide student financial aid "to keep the lights on." It is so more can attend college. A significant portion of schools would continue to exist in the absence of financial aid but way less students would be attending.
I don't get your point about novels. Plenty of less memorable work is immensely worthwhile.
stu, some times I think you're too credulous. Or maybe not cynical enough. The stated purpose of financial aid is so more people can attend college. But it also "keeps the lights on" at institutions that employ people in every congressional district in the country. I would be cynical if a legislator with auto industry support pushed for "transportation aid": grants and below-market loans to buy a car. Or if someone on the religious right pushed for money to save "historical and architecturally important churches."
I have no clue what you think I have wrong unless you assumed I believe things I didn't say.
“However, young workers in AI-exposed occupations are increasingly falling behind their less-exposed peers. Employment among workers ages 22–25 in highly AI-exposed occupations now stands about 19% below where it would be if it had kept pace with employment among similarly aged workers in less-exposed occupations.”
I’m happy to take the data at face value as to the changes in the economy.
But the claim that “*young workers* in AI-exposed occupations are increasingly falling behind” is nonsense.
Less employment in those industries is textbook “creative destruction”.
But in no sense does it mean the workers not employed in those jobs are “falling behind”. Or that those who ARE employed in those jobs are, either.
It is much, much easier even for young workers actually displaced (fired) to find employment in other, growing, at least as lucrative jobs.
If it were skilled older workers who were being put out of work and no longer employable near the wages they were used to, that would be one thing.
“Young Buggy Whip workers falling behind” would have made just as much (non)sense.
"It is much, much easier even for young workers actually displaced (fired) to find employment in other, growing, at least as lucrative jobs."
I think you are right to question the "AI-exposed" claim but more generally, things have significantly deteriorated for recent college grads. Their unemployment rate is rather high.
Texas appears to be leading the way in limiting classroom screen time for students in k-12. Is that a bad thing? As parents, we say no and wholeheartedly support embracing pencils and paper over laptops. To interact productively with AI, one must first learn the prerequisites like critical thinking and the 3Rs. For young learners, cognitive offloading through AI is a trap, not a panacea.
From one of the top 5 districts in the state…
https://x.com/Carrollisd/status/2089510706391466265
From Governor Greg Abbott…
https://www.texastribune.org/2026/08/13/texas-greg-abbott-screen-limits-classrooms-public-education/
For the earliest grades I agree but not at grade 12. That leaves the open question of when and how much to add it as students progress.
Diamandis’ Metatrends piece packs a punch. Especially so given the news that Senator Sanders is introducing a bill to end garnishment of Social Security and disability benefits for defaulted student loans. (https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/6036415-sanders-stop-social-security-garnishment-bill/ ).
If the chatbot is to be believed, from January to August 2025, approximately 115,000 people had their Social Security checks garnished for defaulted student loans, a figure that represents a dramatic increase from just six people in 2000 and roughly double the count from the previous year. Historical data shows the number of beneficiaries facing forced collections surged from 6,200 in 2001 to 192,300 in 2019 before pandemic-era pauses were implemented. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau estimates that about 452,000 borrowers aged 62 and older who are likely receiving Social Security benefits have defaulted on their loans and remain at risk of garnishment.
Overall, as of July 2026, approximately 9.5 million federal student loan borrowers are in default, representing a record high. This figure accounts for $233.3 billion in unpaid debt, which is roughly 20% of all federal student loan borrowers.
The number of defaulted borrowers has more than doubled from 5.3 million in March 2025, following the end of pandemic-era payment pauses and the termination of the SAVE Plan. During the first year of the current administration (2025), an estimated 3.6 million new borrowers fell into default, averaging one new default every 9 seconds. Approximately 4.2 million borrowers defaulted between April 2025 and March 2026 alone, with millions more still delinquent and at risk of entering default.
This current level of default significantly exceeds the pre-pandemic baseline of 7.7 million borrowers recorded in December 2019.
And the university cartel’s strategy of graduating students with weak AI skills is going to make this better?
One might reasonably doubt so.
And that is on top of the growing public perception that the cartel is not fixing itself:
“In the new survey, majorities across all major demographic groups share the view that the U.S. higher education system is going in the wrong direction. But some groups are more likely than others to say this. For example, adults who have a four-year college degree are somewhat more likely than those without a college degree to express this view (74% vs. 69%).
Similarly, 77% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents say the higher education system is going in the wrong direction, compared with a smaller majority (65%) of Democrats and Democratic leaners. In both parties, these shares have gone up by at least 10 percentage points since 2020 – and the gap between Republicans and Democrats has narrowed.“
( https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/10/15/growing-share-of-americans-say-the-us-higher-education-system-is-headed-in-the-wrong-direction/ )
The cartel can only be fixed from the inside, not by outside interlopers. But they have no internal incentives for reform. That, however, readily can be fixed by eliminating tax exemptions for education and eliminating donations to the cartel as a tax deduction.
The Trump administrations efforts to promote competition with the credentialing cartel by lifting regulatory oppression directed at potential skills-based pathway competitors such as apprenticeships, professional certificates, micro-credentials, boot camps, and industry certifications have mostly been of the cheer-leading sort without achieving the volume necessary to be considered a substantive outcome. From 2014 to 2024, the number of registered apprentices grew by 65%, rising from approximately 410,000 to 678,000. By 2024, there were about 680,000 active apprentices nationwide, representing an 88.45% increase since 2015 when participation was roughly 359,000. That is a fraction of where we would be in a free market uninfluenced by the credentialing cartel’s outsize rent-seeking influence. Jettisoning the cartel’s tax advantages would go a long way to producing healthier economic growth as well as maybe improving fertility. How many children do you think all of those millions of people in default on their student loans are having?
Good piece by Hollis Robbins. With any luck, in a few years we'll be talking about the healthcare sector of the U.S. economy facing the sames challenges that higher ed is today.
What is the most important question missing from the Robbins and Diamandis pieces?
"What should you do when AI is changing your comparative advantage?"
And what is a good general answer to this important question?
"Move into the realms LLMs haven't mastered: the physical, and above all the social."
So what should you do? Some examples:
For parents: Get your sixteen-year-old a job framing houses, waiting tables, or lifeguarding at the Y — with a boss who isn't you.
For teachers: Stop grading the essay on the causes of the Civil War — make him argue the case aloud, take questions, and defend it in the room.
For coaches: Keep doing what you already do — the kid shooting a free throw down two with six seconds left can't outsource it.
The new comparative advantage is whatever can't be done alone at a keyboard. The coach in the gym has been doing it all along.
I remember professors lecturing us about slide rules being better than calculators. The reasoning being that slide rules force you to keep track of the order of magnitude of your answer. With calculators it's too easy to punch in numbers and just write down the 'answer' without knowing how far off it was. The first people to buy calculators were the ones that were flunking out. It didn't help.
As a teacher I saw the same thing. Often students would write down a wildly wrong answer and have no idea how far off it was. When I asked, they showed me the calculator result. I tried not to laugh.
I use a calculator. I still have my grandfather's slide rule. I keep it to remind me.