There's only two paths:

1). They are there because they want to increase their own knowledge in order to enrich their lives.

2). They are there because they want a job afterwords.

If they fall into the first category, then they're really cheating themselves, paying for a useless education which won't benefit them in later years the way they think. Enrichment always requires hard work, for humans. But this category is a minority. Most fall into category 2.

If they fall into the second category, then it's the companies doing the hiring who are going to feel the negative affects of a less-educated work-force.

I think this has already been happening for the past few decades. As a Computer Science student a decade ago, I had access to Google and other internet tools to learn my craft. But it was never a replacement for hard work. Since then, my older coworkers who got CS degrees before the age of Google were far better employees. They could solve the problems that the newer people never could.

ChatGPT-type AI is just the next iteration of what's already been happening. By the time you get an answer to your question, it will already be time to attempt to answer the next one.

"The perfect world was a dream that your primitive cerebrum kept trying to wake up from. Which is why the Matrix was redesigned to this: the peak of your civilization.

I say 'your civilization' because as soon as we started thinking for you, it really became our civilization, which is, of course, what this is all about.

Evolution, Morpheus. Evolution.

Like the dinosaur. Look out that window. You had your time.

The future is our world, Morpheus. The future is our time."