Record graduating classes in China and India meet a labour market where entry-level jobs are disappearing — and AI competes for the same skills universities teach.
Is a University Degree Still a Wise Investment?
DW News reports on the global squeeze facing new graduates. China will see roughly 12.7m graduates this summer and India about 10m, at the very moment entry-level jobs are vanishing “en masse” and AI competes for the same skill set academic education produces. In India the old promise — degree = good job — has broken: graduates report anxiety, PhD students are dropping out, and some consider skipping university entirely to open a tea stall. In China, youth unemployment is high and a “pretending to work” industry has even sprung up around unemployed graduates.
The deeper problem, argues the OECD’s Andreas Schleicher, is a skills mismatch: graduates can’t find good jobs while employers say they can’t find the people they need. Germany’s Association of Engineers logged a record 60,000 unemployed engineering/IT professionals last year — even as the country says it needs up to 400,000 more workers annually.
The advice that emerges: adaptability is the key skill, and applied, hands-on experience increasingly beats a pure academic credential. Vocational and applied routes teach a broader range of skills that are “harder for AI to emulate” and give a more direct route into the labour market (though not always higher pay). Tech employers are shifting to skills-first hiring — “what you can do, how creative you are” — with the degree becoming “an afterthought.” Micro-credentials are rising as an alternative to long degrees.
Why it matters (for an engineering student): Engineering sits in the odd middle of this story — more applied and harder for AI to emulate than humanities, yet not immune (see Germany’s 60,000 unemployed engineers). The actionable signals for guiding a 19-year-old: prioritise real-world experience and internships over grades alone, treat the degree as a floor rather than a ceiling, and build adaptability and demonstrable projects — because skills-first hiring means a portfolio now counts as much as the parchment.