AI Isn’t Replacing Jobs — It’s Decreasing the Value of Degrees

Everyone is saying that artificial intelligence is coming for your job. For decades, earning a degree was supposed to be the safest bet you could make. Go to school. Work hard. Graduate. And you were well on your way to a great career. Having a degree sets you apart from the pack and tells employers that you are skilled and ready for greater responsibility.

But AI is now disrupting that idea.

Not by replacing jobs overnight, but by gradually taking over entry-level tasks that we once relied on new graduates to do while they gained experience. Historically, companies hired fresh graduates for entry-level roles because they needed college-educated employees to do the grunt work while they learned the ropes.

But as machines become better at thinking, writing, analyzing, and organizing information, the skills you learned in college are no longer as rare as they once were. It’s not that the degree no longer holds significance; it’s that the job market has seen what AI can do, and now expects employees to do more. Employers are no longer asking, “Which school did you go to?” They are asking, “Why should I hire a human to do what artificial intelligence already does for less?”

But this is why the narrative of AI replacing you is misunderstood.

The question is no longer whether education matters; it’s about whether the way we have been taught to value education still makes sense in a world where intelligence can be automated.

Degree Inflation

Even before AI, the number of college-educated workers rose dramatically over the last decade. Causing college graduates to take jobs that don’t technically require a degree and pushing employees with graduate degrees into roles that previously only required a bachelor’s degree. This saturation of graduates led to employers now looking for applicants with higher education or specialized skills in addition to a degree. This was the first sign that the degree was losing value.

What was happening just before the AI boom was degree inflation. As more people were earning degrees, employers responded in the most natural way possible: by raising the bar. Jobs that once required a high school diploma began asking for a bachelor’s degree. Roles that once welcomed generalists started preferring master’s degrees. Not because the work suddenly became harder, but because filtering through the many “qualified applicants” became necessary.

Degrees stopped being a premium and became entry-level requirements.

And just when we were settling into this new landscape of degree inflation in the market, now enters AI.

AI took tasks that required years of formal education, research, drafting, summarizing, and basic analysis, and now made them seem like routine capabilities. Not high-level skills you could stick into your resume anymore. When AI can perform, in seconds, what a degree holder was trained to do in years, the leverage of just having a degree is no longer the differentiator.

Who is the Most Exposed

The people feeling the pressure the most right now are not undereducated. Degrees that once promised stability are now leaving people feeling uncomfortable.

The most exposed groups hold general degrees. Ones designed to provide industry vocabulary and knowledge, but not specialized skills that can produce outcomes. Degrees like business administration, communication, management, and broad liberal arts degrees are just some of the groups being exposed. These are the types of degrees that train people to think, write, analyze, and coordinate. Now, AI can replicate these at almost zero cost compared to hiring an employee.

These roles are process-driven, not judgment-driven. AI isn’t replacing these employees completely, but it’s dropping the premium paid for those jobs and reducing the number of people the employer needs to hire.

This is the emotional pain that many of us are feeling right now. We’ve been told to build our identity around being educated, capable, and responsible, and now the job market has dramatically shifted right under our feet.

And the most unsettling aspect of this is that more education alone won’t fix the problem.

The New Divide Isn’t Education; It’s Capability.

Today, the real divide in the workforce isn’t between people who are educated and those who are not. It’s between those with degrees and those who are capable. A degree tells an employer you completed a process. Capability tells them you can solve problems. Make tough decisions when risk is involved. Lower cost. Increase revenue.

That matters now more than ever. And it’s a much different perspective than before. Writing, analysis, and researching are no longer rare skills. AI has lowered the cost of producing work that once required years of formal education. This is how AI is changing the job market.

Degrees still open doors, but once inside, they don’t carry the same weight they once did.

Employers are now looking for skills that can’t easily be done with software. Weighing trade-offs, knowing when not to act, ignoring the data due to experience, managing teams, understanding context, seeing second and third-order effects, and articulating those details. These are not academic skills; these are experiential ones. This is where the value is seen.

It’s no longer about just having a degree that validates you, but being able to prove your usefulness.

In an AI-driven economy, the person who knows what to do when the tool fails, contradicts itself, or produces a misleading answer becomes far more valuable than the person who simply knows how to use the tool. Capability is not about how much work you can do; it’s about taking ownership of decisions and making an impact.

As AI continues to compress the value of routine cognitive work, the people who thrive will be those who can integrate tools, apply judgment, and take responsibility for outcomes. Not because they learned more, but because they learned how to use what they know in context.

Actionable steps you can take right now:

Here’s the good news. As basic tasks get automated, the advantage shifts to people who can think clearly, define problems, and think outside of the box.

That doesn’t mean the takeaway is “college is useless now.” It means college on its own isn’t enough anymore. What matters is whether you can show real leverage, problems you’ve solved, and tools you know how to use without a tutorial open in another tab.

It’s not about being able to use technology, but also take those outputs and contextualizing the data and driving change. The high-value professionals are not trying to compete with AI; they are leveraging AI and learning how to ask better questions, validate accuracy, and apply the output.

If you want to stay valuable as AI is changing the job market, start here:

Do this now:

1. Rewrite your résumé. For each role, write one problem the employer had and how it was fixed because of you.

Old:

Managed reports and analysis

New:

Reduced reporting turnaround time by 35% by rebuilding analysis workflows

Create a portfolio of before and after work, if possible. Get good at explaining how you think through problems.  Be able to explain a process you improved. This gives interviewers something concrete to evaluate. It also provides insight into your ability to think on your feet.

Next:

1. Pick one AI tool. Don’t try to get a basic understanding of a lot of AI tools. Choose one that is relevant to your field and start using it every day on real tasks, not tutorials. Get a deep understanding of it. You’ll learn more by seeing where it falls apart than by watching someone else use it perfectly.
   • Take the work you’re already doing for class or on the job and turn it into proof: write a short breakdown of how you approached a problem, build something small, or explain what you learned and share it somewhere. It doesn’t have to be perfect.
   • Practice explaining your work to someone who isn’t in your field. Clear communication isn’t a “nice to have” anymore. It’s how you stand out when everyone else looks similar.
2. Customize your Resume for each job using the job description.
   • Just blindly spamming the same resume to employers may feel like you’re making a difference, but it’s unproductive.
   • Quality applications tailored to the position have a higher chance of being qualified.

The people doing well in this shift aren’t waiting for permission or a syllabus. They’re learning in public, experimenting with tools on their own time, and building proof instead of hoping potential gets noticed. A portfolio of problems solved beats just having a high GPA. Jobs are getting filled by people who can demonstrate value quickly.

When your value is tied to problems solved, that’s what makes you harder to replace and easier to hire.

Degrees Still Matter, Just Not the Way They Used To

For decades, universities sold a simple equation: earn the degree, gain security. The equation made sense when the degrees were scarce. What isn’t being talked about in mass is how universities are moving too slow. Today, information is abundant, tools are powerful, and AI has collapsed the distance between knowing and doing.

This is why so many educated professionals feel uneasy. They did what they were told, but the job market shifted right before their eyes. It’s past time for higher education to evolve. The reward of a degree is no longer worth the cost now that a degree no longer carries the same weight.

While elite schools may still be able to survive on its networking capability, other schools will need to increase its reliability. Instead of banning AI, universities should be learning how to integrate it into the curriculum. Explore ways to provide real-world outcomes leveraged with the use of artificial intelligence and ensure degrees can be directly tied to capability. Graduates must show proof of outcomes.

The future belongs to people who learn differently. Those who treat education as a tool, not an identity. People who build skills intentionally, leverage AI to assist in decision making and not just letting it make decisions for you. People who create value by solving real problems, making sound decisions, and adapting faster than the systems around them.

The goal is not to abandon education. It is to outgrow the illusion that education alone is enough. Learn how systems work. Learn how value is created. For those willing to adapt, this era does not shrink possibility. It expands it.

That is something worth leaning into.