AI will demand much of our leaders. Its rapid development, intense iteration and swift adoption into work, school and personal environments means that leaders—from boardrooms to classrooms—will need to embrace a new agility and flexibility to keep pace with this rapid change. AI’s development is accelerating and its capacity and capability is only projected to increase. For students and young professionals, this means entering a career market where the ability to work alongside AI will likely become a condition of employment. This changing landscape will require academic, public and private sector leaders to consider how best to equip students and young professionals with the necessary skills to succeed in a rapidly evolving AI-powered workforce.  

In recent polling conducted by Heartland Forward on how heartlanders feel about and engage with AI, over 50% of respondents reported a low understanding of how to use AI professionally. Even more revealing, only 1% of respondents considered themselves highly proficient in AI, demonstrating a significant readiness gap across all ages. The polling also demonstrated a substantial increase in heartlanders’ desire to learn more about AI. Between 2024 and 2025, respondents who were  interested in learning more about AI, not only increased—it more than doubled. This likely contributes to the finding that 71% of respondents felt their employer should offer training on how to use AI tools. 

These findings demonstrate not only an interest in learning about this new technology, but an awareness of the impending importance of AI in hiring and the workplace, as well as a desire for leadership in upskilling. While current members of the workforce look to their employers for guidance, the heartland’s academic institutions have taken it upon themselves to incorporate AI education into university curricula in an effort to prepare students for the modern workforce before graduation, and the school leading this charge is The Ohio State University (OSU). 

While other universities around the heartland and broader country are creating AI-informed majors and minors, OSU recently established an AI-fluency requirement for all students, independent of major. Beginning with the class of 2029, Ohio State’s AI Fluency initiative will provide Buckeye students with a comprehensive AI-informed education—empowering students to learn how to leverage AI tools, innovate with them and additionally, to question their use. 

What this looks like in practice is as follows: 

• AI will be introduced to all undergraduates in a general education seminar. 
• GenAI workshops will be integrated into a required freshman year course that helps students acclimate to college life, while additional workshops will be made available to all students throughout their academic career at OSU. 
• A new “Unlocking Generative AI” course will be made available to all majors—teaching core AI skills and allowing students to creatively explore AI’s capacity and potential social impact. 

With these first steps in mind, OSU aims to promote academic excellence among its community while also taking a lead role in demonstrating how responsible AI adoption and integration better prepare students for the future workforce. OSU President Walter “Ted” Carter Jr. expanded on this in the university’s June announcement: 

“Ohio State has an opportunity and responsibility to prepare students to not just keep up, but lead in this workforce of the future. I’m so pleased that we are taking this bold step forward to set our students up for success and keep Ohio competitive for the long term. We have a strong foundation on which to build, and the AI Fluency initiative will only accelerate our momentum in mission-driven AI research and education.”

The Ohio State University is setting the early standard for AI graduation requirements, but it is not the only major heartland academic institution working to provide an AI-informed education to students.

• In May 2025, the University of Michigan announced a new minor concentration in human-centered artificial intelligence to teach undergraduate students how to apply AI to their fields of study ethically and effectively. 
• In 2025, Indiana University took incremental steps to promote statewide understanding of AI by expanding access to its GenAI 101 courses powered by OpenAI, which begin in January 2026. Indiana University first gave access to its nearly 120,000 students, faculty and staff before opening access to all 800,000 active alumni. 
• In late October 2025, Creighton University launched a self-paced, $50 online course titled An Educator’s Guide to AI aimed at helping K–12 teachers learn AI basics, ethics and practical classroom uses, further enriching the cycle of productive AI education in the workforce of the future. 

While universities are hubs for future members of the workforce, college is not the only pathway to a successful career. For this reason, public and private entities are partnering to upskill those still in high school or already in the workforce. One example of this work is a recent partnership between Stemuli, a Dallas-based ed-tech innovation company, and Heartland Forward to create a first-of-its-kind AI-learning platform to help rural students and entrepreneurs learn AI skills through the power of gaming. Additionally, states around the heartland are looking to help constituents upskill. Oklahoma, for example, launched a partnership with Google to upskill local workers on AI tools through online coursework, offering no-cost training to 10,000 residents.  

Taken together, the programs delivered by universities, nonprofits and leaders in the AI industry and public sector will help create a technically-skilled workforce, but also suggest larger economic benefits as a result. The heartland stands to gain from AI upskilling and education initiatives in multiple ways:

1. Estimates suggest that $40 billion of private capital and roughly 95,000 jobs will arrive in Ohio in the coming years through an influx of data center and tech infrastructure investments. In order to secure the successful execution of these investments, they will need the talented workforce being crafted by OSU and peer institutions alike.
2. An AI-literate workforce will help attract future investments in heartland geographies.
3. The creation of a baseline AI understanding among the heartland’s population will promote further innovation in the heartland, creating new opportunities for development and spurring the cycle of economic growth. 

Modern jobs require more collaboration with AI than ever before. OSU’s requirements are just the beginning of a national movement towards a universally AI-fluent workforce ready to compete in global markets. The more heartland institutions do to support a modern workforce, the greater the heartland’s capacity to lead in the next era of US economic growth.