Photograph by Nicolò Rinaldi / Connected ArchivesOver the past week, I’ve been stuck in much more traffic than usual here in Berkeley, as thousands of families have come to town for graduation. Every crosswalk around campus has been filled with proud parents trailing behind their children, who are eager to show off their favorite boba spot or noodle place or the souvenir stores where they can buy sweatshirts and hats. Yesterday, while driving my nine-year-old daughter to soccer practice, we once again got caught in one of these celebratory migrations, which prompted her to ask why there was always so much fuss over what amounted to the end of the school year.“Well, it’s a big deal for them. They’re adults now,” I said.“I thought you became an adult when you were eighteen,” she said.“Yes, but, like, this is when you go get a job and enter the world,” I said, a bit haltingly.“Oh, O.K.,” she said, sounding unconvinced. Then she asked if we could go to Shake Shack after practice, and I told her that it would be too crowded with all the graduates and their families, which, in turn, made her conclude that graduation was stupid.She has plenty of reasons to be skeptical. For the past three weeks, I’ve been writing about whether this daughter of mine will even be attending college at all—or, if advances in artificial intelligence, the wave of anti-establishment populism in the country, and a sharp shift in demographics might mean that a lot of children her age will be doing something else when they graduate from high school. This series of columns, to date, includes a survey of the most probable outcomes for students, a speculative but entertaining account of what the A.I.-altered future of higher education might look like, and a deeper study of the “enrollment cliff” facing colleges across the country. Hopefully, the series will give you some guidance on whether you should keep shoving money in those 529s or maybe save up for something else entirely.Read the Fault Lines column »Editor’s PickA picture of Zahra Abboud, in Anqoun, Lebanon, in April. Photograph by Myriam Boulos / Magnum for The New Yorker