Today we may again be creating an assertive and angry class — as evidenced in the recent LA riots and the pro-Palestine protests on US campuses over the last year and a half — made up of degree holders. We can see this in recent reports that show the job market getting tougher for graduates. Hit hardest are those professionals on the “soft” side of the economy (finance, accounting, law, coding) whose jobs are increasingly threatened by the rise of artificial intelligence.
These industries tend to have a higher proportion of humanities graduates and countries in the West more generally have a problem with elite overproduction. As AI grows, there won’t be enough jobs to go round, and even if those graduates do get a job, their employers, with so many candidates to choose from, won’t pay well.
These developments may be felt most by upper-middle class young women, who make up almost two thirds of humanities graduates. This demographic has also been the driving force for campus radicalism. If they were alienated before by the patriarchy and capitalism, just wait till they can’t find a decent job and lose economic power.
More broadly the changing labour dynamics also undermine the future of universities, now the prime institutional bulwark of the American Left. The roots of this crisis were being dug up by economic forces well before Donald Trump started attacking them. This is due in large part to demographic declines among the young: by 2029 there will be 700,000 fewer people entering high school than in 2010. Since 2011 enrollments have fallen by roughly 15%. The ratio of college students to the total American population has declined even more, by around 20%.
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