Gen Z Says Its Unprepared to Enter AI-Infiltrated Workforce
Meanwhile trade schools are thriving and military recruitment is up, as high school students choose new paths toward jobs and careers.
A significant number of undergraduates and recent graduates feel that artificial intelligence (AI) is undermining the value and relevance of their college degrees.
Nearly half of Gen Z job seekers (49%) report that AI has made their degrees feel irrelevant, with many questioning whether the time and money invested in higher education is still justified in an AI-driven job market.
As artificial intelligence floods the workplace, nearly half of Gen Z job seekers say their degrees have already been made obsolete by the rise of generative AI tools like ChatGPT — and they’re wondering why they even bothered hitting the books in the first place.
It’s a waste of time and money, according to respondents to a new Indeed report, which found 49% of Gen Z job hunters think their college education has lost value in the job market thanks to AI.
Only about one-third of millennials feel the same way, and just 1 in 5 boomers have similar regrets, as CIO Dive reports.
The tech tide isn’t turning anytime soon. Businesses are adopting AI faster than you can say “resume rewrite,” and young workers — especially fresh-out-of-college grads — are feeling the squeeze most.
The survey also suggests that a lack of AI knowledge among graduates coincided with a general decline in optimism about the job market.
More than a third of graduates (39 percent) said they feel threatened that generative AI could replace them or their job entirely.
“That’s spot on to what I’ve seen and heard,” said Ray Schroeder, senior fellow at UPCEA, an online and professional education association, and a contributor to Inside Higher Ed. “Those students are looking ahead; they’re looking at not just the next class but their careers and what the HR department or owner of the start-up is going to look for in students. And it’s the ability to use the rapidly evolving technology that’ll make a huge difference.”
Employers report a skills gap in the ability of workers to use generative AI. Roughly half of 1,000 employers polled said they expect hires to lack generative AI skills. Nearly two-thirds (62 percent) believe both prospective and current hires should have foundational knowledge of generative AI tools, while more than half (58 percent) said they are more likely to interview and hire candidates with AI experience.
Beege Welborne of the Hot Air blog also noted these reports and paired her analysis that higher education is facing an enrollment disaster, as the number of 18-year-olds declined in what they’ve called a ‘demographic cliff.’ No matter how many high schools push “college for everyone,” there is now a new awareness of just how useless many degrees are.
Apparently, academic bureaucrats had not counted on the truth being revealed and prospective students opting for vocational school.
I’m sure, in their arrogance, they hadn’t counted on general disaffection with their institutions among the graduating seniors they had left to draw from, to maintain their student bodies. Toss in a healthy dose of parents who will no longer allow their seniors to consider certain institutions thanks to what’s going on on campus, and these colleges could have a real financial crisis on their hands in short order.
It’s going to be quite a shock to the system if the virtues of honest blue-collar labor are once again celebrated instead of reviled and mocked.
Rebalancing that would be a pretty neat thing.
Trade school isn’t the only option high school graduates are considering, either. Our military is experiencing a notable surge in recruitment across all branches in 2024 and early 2025, marking a dramatic turnaround after several years of struggle.
Military enlistments rose by 12.5% from fiscal year 2023 (200,000 recruits) to fiscal year 2024 (225,000 recruits). Part of the success of these efforts has been related to the launch of preparedness programs.
The Navy spokesperson said the service makes assessments on figures on an annual basis but noted that some policies that enlarged the pool of recruits, including a preparatory course that helps potential sailors meet Navy academic and physical standards, have helped the effort.
The Navy’s prep course followed the success of the Army’s Future Soldier Preparatory Course that contributed close to a quarter of last year’s Army recruiting goal of 55,000 recruits.
“We did open up the aperture a little bit for people that want to serve in uniform, and we expanded various policies to increase opportunities for qualified candidates,” the spokesperson said.
Policies that open the aperture enable services to tap into a wider range of potential recruits — and the prep courses are intended to help them reach the academic or physical shape to meet standards.
I can see why young Americans would prefer preparedness over indoctrination.
It appears that universities are going to land in the Sea of Reality once they fully jump off the demographic cliff.
It appears at universities are going to land in the Sea of Reality once they fully jump off the demographic cliff.
Getting Your Hands Dirty Getting Attractive for Gen Z https://t.co/6QQY1DgFrv via @WelbornBeege of @hotairblog
— Leslie Eastman ☥ (@Mutnodjmet) April 26, 2025
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Comments
Their degrees were worthless before AI. Who thought spending 200k on a history degree was ever a good idea?
Yeah. Blame the unpreparedness on AI. That’s the ticket.
I want to see writing samples.
First off, I’m glad to be my age and not having to go through what these young people are facing. If this trend wrecks ‘Big College’ then so much the better. Hopefully most Gen Z will avoid the debt trap that is college.
I find it very interesting to note that all of a sudden, the local community college is offering courses in welding, electrical work, and plumbing..
Around here it is those courses and more. There are waiting lists to get in.
Maybe because they were sold a bill of goods about how wonderful technology is and how you should just marinate your entire life in it. Because “progress!”.
No one is prepared for what’s coming, because no one knows what’s coming.
No one in Washington was prepared for the possibility that a handful of nerds could unwrap all the layers of money laundering.
No one is prepared for robots that can do manual labor.
its not a problem
do like like they did to you did in school
get next to the nearest asian kid who will actually be in charge of you or he will be held accountable and take your social promotion with that same swag and threaten any future employee with a lawsuit
AI isn’t taking over the world, but good on them for avoiding the university pipeline.
“AI” is marketing hype, the 2020’s Segway.
It’s not. I work in tech for a large company and they’re integrating AI into everything. We have half a dozen internal AI tools that we have to use almost daily otherwise our managers ask us why we’re not using them.
“Because they aren’t helpful and make more work for me”?
They are actually very helpful. When I need a script to do something at work I can write it in half the time or less with AI helping. Also right now I am putting in a new tool and when I run into a part I am not sure of I can send an email to the rep of the vendor that sold us the tool and get an answer tomorrow, spend 2-3 hrs looking through the online manuals to find the answer, or ask AI and it will do that search for me in less than a minute. That said AI is a tool. You have to know how to use it and when I say it speeds up script writing, you do need to know how to write the script yourself in order to give it good instructions or you will get something that does not work.
If they were really AI, you could just have them use each other.
grep with a full sentence packaged output.
grep (circa 1965)
Illustrated by, (what appears to be,) an AI generated ‘photograph’ of a crowd of Gen Z lacking functional hands.
First rule of AI images: hide as many hands as possible!
Generation Z unprepared to enter workforce while most illegals are fully employed doing work Gen Z is not prepared to do.
Universities concentrated on social issues, missed the boat.
Sadly, the worst, “name” academic institutions could tolerate a 50% drop in their applications by just doubling their acceptance rate and still be very selective. It is the smaller ones, some of which actually offer a good education, that might have trouble surviving.
Eh…it’s s tough world out there. Wear a helmet.
On a serious note not all AI is the same and much of it is just marketing. Example, let’s say I have a tool that scans code and makes recommendations on how to optimize it. Is that really AI? Sounds like it, except such tools have existed for over 25 years. In fact optimizers have been built into source compilers since the 1970s.
I’m out of the tech field now but I would expect a true AI has a set of base capabilities that most software or systems marketed as AI actually don’t have. It will also require a lot of processing power which is why the big companies want nuclear power plants adjacent to their AI data centers.
“Its” -> “it’s” in the title
You beat me to it.
Not all Zoomers are lazy whiners, however there are a significant number of them who are lazy whiners and entitled brats. Oh, and with useless degrees in [insert victim name] studies degrees that make them untrainable, untenable, and unloadable on the public. Can’t even make ‘em baristas anymore since that function is being automated.
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