Two summers ago, Joe Thorp woke up on a hot Thursday in August to take part in a rite of passage familiar to most British teenagers: A-level results day. While many of his classmates lay awake worrying about university offers, Joe already knew he wasn’t going. He had a plan – and it didn’t involve lecture halls. He calmly opened his results to find he’d got an A in accounting, an A in Level 3 core maths, and two D*s (distinction stars, the highest grade possible) in his Btec business diploma – and went home to celebrate.
In the weeks that followed, as friends loaded duvets and saucepans into cars bound for campuses across the country, Joe stayed in his childhood bedroom making cold calls, building his own vision for a new business specialising in social-media marketing for tradeworkers, such as local building and electrical firms. Joe’s decision wasn’t based on his grades not meeting the requirements of his chosen university – nor was it made on a whim.
Quite the opposite: he had spent the months prior to results day researching his higher education options, much like everyone else in his sixth form; filling in Ucas application forms and imagining life away from his family home in Somerset.
“There were quite a few things about uni that a lot of people go for – like going out all the time, for example, or living on their own away from home – that just didn’t seem like big enough pros for me,” he explains. What’s more, the highly changeable jobs market, rapidly contorting around the increasing impact of AI, felt unreliable against the cost of university.
“You can’t rely on a job existing in three years just because it exists now,” says Joe. “Instead, I liked the idea of building something – I’m learning lots of skills and different job roles in one go now, not just aiming for one specific job that can be taken by AI.”
Recommended
If a third of entry-level jobs are going to AI this is how students need to adaptAI is coming for middle class jobs, but it will mean a new boom for the working classThe death of the career – why it’s now all about ‘passive income’ and the ‘polygamous worker’
By the time most of his friends were sitting their first lot of exams, Joe was signing his first clients for his company, Upper Hand Marketing. Two years later, it’s a profitable business, and Joe has no regrets.
Promoted stories
Your Thursday Quiz: What Do You Actually Need To Lose Weight?Noom Go To Quiz
Undo
Sponsored LinksSponsored Links
As tens of thousands of teenagers across the UK nervously collect envelopes, Joe is an example of why the luckiest among them may be the ones who don’t end up going to university.
For decades, the script has been clear and simple: A-levels, university, a ticket to a job with higher earnings. For employers, a degree signified a necessary level of self-discipline and ambition; for parents, it offered a reliable structure for the potential wilderness years after the routine of school had ended, as well as a safety net. But that longstanding bargain has broken down.
Now, degrees can rarely guarantee the careers they once did: graduate role openings are at their lowest level for seven years according to recent reports, and junior or entry-level jobs are rare, the spectrum of these roles being reshaped beyond recognition by AI. And it’s a global issue: last week, business magazine Fortune declared that, while “college used to open doors, now even grads with master’s degrees are sending 60 applications per month with no luck”.
August 2025 may go down as the month when artificial intelligence started to show up in the jobs data, and experts predict the rate of change is only going to speed up as AI models double in power every few months.
“AI is dissolving the bottom rung of the corporate ladder, especially in economies and industries where information work dominates,” Ignacio Palomera, CEO of Bondex, a leading Web3 professional networking and jobs platform, explains.
open image in gallery
For decades, the school-to-career pipeline was clear – no AI has upended everything(PA)
“This is not a binary story of jobs lost vs jobs gained, but rather an asymmetrical transformation where tasks are being obliterated faster than the market can absorb or reskill the displaced. The first casualties are disproportionately early-career professionals and operational generalists.”
Last week, Microsoft published a study showing the 40 jobs that are most (and least) at risk from AI. Among those facing the greatest threat were data scientists, web developers, financial advisers, management analysts, and those with jobs in advertising and PR. Political scientists, historians, interpreters and mathematicians were also deemed to be at high risk. Large consultancies and some law firms are also reporting the automation of entry-level jobs.
These are all roles that students go to university to get. Which is why many are starting to wonder whether the cost of going to university (the average graduate debt stands at ￡53,000) is worth it. As the increased cost of living means that maintenance loans will now only cover half of what an individual needs to survive their three years of study, the “university experience” has become a rare privilege.
More students attending higher education are now living at home (30 per cent in 2024/25), which means institutions are spending less on things like freshers’ socials; halls are now often reportedly built and run by external commercial firms, and with no cap on university intakes, class sizes are large enough to make for a lonely environment.
For parents watching on, imagining their teenagers enjoying exploits similar to their own decades ago, the last few years have been just as much of a rollercoaster. Joe tells me that his parents, who both went to university, had always urged him to work hard at school so he would have that same opportunity. But, as the jobs market was transformed by the progress of technology, like many parents, they softened – or completely changed – their view.
“This time last year, I was saying graduates earn more than non-graduates to try and make my son see the value of getting a degree,” one parent tells me. “A year later, a very different picture is emerging. Instead of an amazing opportunity, I think it’s turned into an expensive racket – and the job market is changing so much, thanks to AI, that everything we think about getting a graduate job – a good salary and future-proofing – has been turned on its head.”
open image in gallery
The ‘university experience’ is now a rare privilege(Getty)
Even in the last few years, tech jobs that promised shiny futures and more-than-healthy financial prospects have U-turned. “My eldest son did computer science at university, so I thought he’d be future-proofed – but I was wrong. This year, instead of encouraging uni, I’m saying to my youngest son: what jobs can AI not do? Start there and maybe do your learning in a different way. Get a trade, or fly the nest abroad, not down the road in Leeds.”
“There have been a lot of false promises,” Chloe Combi, author and Gen Z and Gen A expert, explains. “For example, I’ve been speaking a lot recently to young coders and people who went into computer science and IT – an area that, it was promised, would offer six-figure salaries and be on the frontier of the best kinds of opportunity. But with the advent of AI in the last couple of years, those breaks have completely fallen away.”
Quite quickly, says Combi, across most industries, the career ladder is “becoming a race to the bottom”. And AI affects the entire process. “I can’t tell you how many young people I’ve spoken to recently who have been interviewed as job candidates by AI.” But there is a flip side to it all, she says.
“There’s been a real renaissance in skills that aren’t often offered in schools, like Arabic, Japanese and Chinese; employers are also constantly looking for problem-solvers, people with can-do attitudes who are really good communicators. In many ways, it’s going to make us look at, and value, what is human again.”
Some predict that this sentiment – valuing human skills and, leading from there, manual work – could lead to a renaissance: the birth of a new working class. In the face of AI-driven disruption, manual trades are gaining new respect: a Zety survey reported by the New York Post found that 53 per cent of Gen Z view blue-collar jobs as more resistant to automation, while 65 per cent don’t believe that a university degree offers protection from AI-driven job loss.
open image in gallery
Students at The City of London Academy receive their A-level results in 2022(Getty)
The Microsoft study also documented which jobs are least at risk from AI, and that list included maids and housekeepers, roofers, housepainters, phlebotomists, and nursing assistants.
Andrew Yang is an American entrepreneur, former presidential candidate and author of The War on Normal People: The Truth About America’s Disappearing Jobs and Why Universal Basic Income Is Our Future, wrote in his Substack: “An ageing population and the difficulty of automating phlebotomy or home healthcare and an ongoing nursing shortage suggest that maybe if you head to this field, your job will be safe. I certainly would feel more confident in someone pursuing a nursing degree than, say, a law degree.”
The “toolbelt generation”, as it’s begun to be known, is well and truly getting started. And, as society follows suit in acknowledging and reassessing the value of physical labour, or caring skills in healthcare, not just as “something to fall back on” but as a meaningful career choice – it may well engender the sort of much-needed respect that has, for a long time, been reserved for more middle-class professions.
That’s not to say there aren’t still barriers: while it feels refreshing for a generation to have figured out that going to university is actually little more than paying through the nose for a shot at being middle-class – and they’re refusing to play the big game that pretends the working world is run on a meritocracy rather than by the wealthy – it’s not all plain sailing.
As Combi points out, all of this is relatively new – and without that scripted structure for the next few years of their lives, many young people are stuck without a decent alternative route to attaining financial security and success.
“Even if you asked most adults to name a programme or viable alternative to university for an 18-year-old to take, they couldn’t,” Combi observes. “They might be able to say a vague thing about apprenticeships or the like, but they wouldn’t have any more in-depth information than that.” While job postings mentioning apprenticeships are up by 5.3 per cent, according to LinkedIn, there are currently only around 5,000 listed on the Ucas website.
open image in gallery
Going to university in 2025 involves accruing debts as high as ￡50,000, with little guarantee of a job afterwards(Adobe)
“We’re in a really interesting time – but there are still way too many uncertainties and not nearly enough focus or investment in competent, viable routes aside from the university track,” adds Combi. Still, for Joe, the gamble is already paying off. “I’ve learnt more in the last two years running my own business than I think I would have in three years of lectures,” he says. He’s also saved himself at least ￡50,000 in debt, and has started making money instead.
“It’s not that I don’t think anyone should go to university,” he’s quick to clarify, “but for me, building something real made more sense. Even if it doesn’t work out, going to a prospective employer having done this for myself feels more valuable.”
Today, Joe’s little brother, Barnaby, will take his turn waking up on results day and collecting that all-important envelope. But, just as for Joe, there’ll be no scrambling for Ucas logins or anxiously going through clearing. Instead, Barnaby will join his brother in his business.
RECOMMENDED
Melania Trump threatens Hunter Biden with $1bn lawsuit over Epstein claim
Undo
Netanyahu ‘in talks’ to relocate Palestinians from Gaza to South Sudan
Undo
The 87￠ Viagra Trick Especially for Men on Social Security.Friday Plans |
Undo
Top 10 Blood Pressure Monitors of 2024 Tested by DocReviewsDocReviews |
Undo
Powered by TaboolaPowered by Taboola
“I’ve already started full-time work with him – I did as soon as I left sixth form,” he tells me. The majority of his friends, like Joe’s, will go to university, though some have been drawn to practical trades. “I just thought, it’s so expensive nowadays – that was a factor. And I could see that I would get more out of the hands-on business stuff and learning lots of skills than just paying all that money for a degree.”
This year, as will inevitably be the case for many years to come, some A-level students will be told that university is the only “proper”, or “right” route to success. But, in a world that’s rapidly changing, where nobody knows what is coming, it’s the class of 2025 who are leading the way – and rewriting the rules entirely.