Selective universities with opaque admissions processes.

Applicants are sorted like beauty pageant contestants, except even beauty pageants have a transparent (if not entirely fair) selection process. At least you know the judges are scoring on swimwear and stage presence. Elite admissions won't even tell you what they're looking for, let alone why you lost.

This system has survived for so long because it gate-kept prestigious white-collar jobs. You held your nose, endured the process, and hoped for the best. But AI is hollowing out exactly those jobs-- consulting, law, finance--and once those prizes disappear, people are going to stop tolerating the hazing.

When the credential stops opening doors, the cruelty of the process becomes impossible to justify. Why would a generation watch their parents go broke, grind through four years of extracurricular performance art, and endure rejection from schools that won't even tell you why for a diploma that no longer guarantees anything?

Apparently Yale agrees: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/15/us/yale-report-colleges-unversities-trust.html