Study Hard, Get a Career, Get Ahead? It's Not What It Used to Be

The central argument is that education-based meritocracy depends on a bargain: people accept social inequality when they believe anyone can study, demonstrate ability and earn a better life. Student protests in India and France expose how that promise is failing. In India, a leaked medical-admissions exam forced candidates who had studied for years to retake it, intensifying anger at a system seen as broken. In France, deteriorating schools, missing teachers and opaque university admissions challenged education’s traditional role as a path upward. Similar disillusionment is evident among indebted graduates facing insecure work, in European youth protests and in Serbia’s student-led political movement. Education expanded access to careers and helped governments secure public consent, but the effort can demand years of study, family sacrifice and substantial debt.

When degrees no longer lead to stable, well-paid jobs, the losses are not only economic: people may conclude that the system is rigged and seek political alternatives. Research on China’s 1905 abolition of its civil-service exams links frustrated candidates’ lost prospects to revolutionary organizing before the 1911 overthrow of the dynasty. Today, high youth unemployment and living costs in Europe, insufficient job growth in India, and debt and low-paid work among U.S. graduates are fueling discontent. Artificial intelligence could deepen the rupture by eliminating entry-level jobs and changing professional work and pay, weakening the connection between education and opportunity. The resulting uncertainty threatens both young people’s routes to security and the political legitimacy built on the promise of advancement.