From Credentials to Algorithms: AI and the Revaluation of Human Worth

• In Event: Organizations, Occupations, and Work Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (90 minute): Table 1: Artificial Intelligence and Work

Abstract

Higher education has long been sustained by a powerful institutional promise: that intellectual effort, academic credentials, and educational achievement would lead to social recognition, economic security, and a stable future. This promise has been particularly salient for students in elite institutions, where academic excellence has traditionally functioned as a reliable signal of labor market value. Yet today, this linkage is increasingly unraveling. The rapid diffusion of artificial intelligence has destabilized entry-level employment, weakened traditional career pathways, and introduced new forms of uncertainty even for highly credentialed graduates. As a result, students face not only academic pressure but also deep anxiety about whether education can still secure a dignified and stable life.
This paper examines how artificial intelligence is transforming the relationship between education, employment, and human worth. It argues that employability has emerged as a dominant measure of educational value through a process of social construction shaped by institutional priorities, labor market restructuring, and narratives of technological inevitability. Drawing on social problems theory, the study reframes job anxiety not as an individual psychological response, but as a socially produced condition rooted in structural changes to the governance of work.
This study employs a qualitative multi-method approach combining semi-structured interviews, digital ethnography, and analysis of algorithmic hiring and workplace monitoring systems. Findings reveal a profound asymmetry of knowledge and power between employers and workers, as opaque AI systems reshape definitions of merit while reproducing existing inequalities. By demonstrating how algorithmic governance redefines human value in the labor market, this study contributes to broader sociological debates about the future of work, the legitimacy of higher education’s promise, and the ethical implications of artificial intelligence in contemporary society.

Author

• Huicong Lin, University of California-Berkeley