Millions of young people were sold a simple promise: go to college, earn a degree, and step into a stable office job. That promise is now unravelling, fast. Gen Z graduates are entering the workforce just as entry-level white-collar roles are being quietly absorbed by artificial intelligence, while millennials are grappling with student debt for careers whose prospects have sharply narrowed.Now, one of the world’s most influential voices in global hiring has said the quiet part out loud. The traditional college-to-office pipeline, he argues, is no longer reliable and may already be broken.
Randstad CEO : “That path is starting to break”
Sander van ’t Noordende, global CEO of Randstad, the world’s largest talent company, has delivered a stark warning. Speaking to Fortune, van ’t Noordende said young people must rethink whether taking on student loans for rapidly changing professions still makes sense.“People need to reflect on, taking a student loan, going to college and being trained or educated for a profession that is rapidly changing, whether that’s still the right path,” he said to Fortune.Randstad places around half a million workers into jobs every week, giving van ’t Noordende a panoramic view of global labour demand. Under that lens, the signals are troubling. “We all grew up with our parents saying, ‘go do something in college or university and then do something in an office,’” he told Fortune. “That path that used to work for a long time is starting to break.”
AI and the collapse of entry-level white-collar work
The damage is already visible. Graduates are struggling to find work, particularly in fields once seen as safe bets. Marketing, communications, and design, traditional entry points into office careers, are among the hardest hit.“You already see that with graduates finding it harder to find a job,” van ’t Noordende said. “Just look at how good AI already is at some of that.”Tech leaders have been warning for years that artificial intelligence can now perform many tasks once assigned to junior employees. Some forecasts suggest AI could eliminate or significantly shrink white-collar roles by 2030. A “first-of-its-kind” study by Stanford University has already found that AI is having a “significant and disproportionate impact” on Gen Z workers, particularly those seeking entry-level roles.
Why ‘follow your passion’ is no longer good advice
Perhaps most controversially, van ’t Noordende rejected one of the most popular mantras sold to young people. With the white-collar job market effectively frozen, he said it is no longer “good advice” to tell students to simply follow their passions.“No,” he said. “Learn a craft or a trade or a skill or a profession where you can make a good living and provide for yourself and your family. That is much better advice than follow your passion.”His argument is echoed in policy decisions. The UK government recently announced an investment of £750 million (about $965 million) into apprenticeships aimed at placing tens of thousands of unemployed young people into future-facing jobs, primarily in hospitality, retail, and artificial intelligence.
STEM still matters, but not everywhere
Van ’t Noordende stopped short of dismissing college entirely. For those determined to pursue higher education, he said STEM disciplines remain critical, noting that China produces science and engineering graduates at roughly twice the rate of the US and parts of Europe.But for those who have already sunk time and money into degrees losing relevance, his message was pragmatic rather than sympathetic: Retrain.“Learning new skills is always good,” he said. “Look around you, and where you see the opportunities that match with your skills and your background, go there.”
Redefining failure in a broken system
Moving from an office job to becoming a plumber, teacher, nurse, or technician is not failure, he argued, it is adaptation. The real mistake is clinging to outdated expectations in a labour market that has already moved on.For a generation raised on the promise that degrees guarantee dignity, the adjustment is painful. But as AI reshapes work faster than education systems can respond, one reality is becoming unavoidable: Survival in the modern economy depends less on credentials and more on the willingness to learn, unlearn, and rebuild.
