The careers your students are planning for are changing faster than you think

Here’s a stat that stopped me cold: EY has delayed graduate start dates for three consecutive years. Students hired in 2025 won’t start until March 2026. The reason? AI and offshore automation are replacing the work that entry-level accountants used to do.

This isn’t about fast food jobs disappearing. It’s about law. Consulting. Investment banking. Software engineering. The exact careers that St. Louis private school students have been preparing for.

In conversations with school administrators across the ISSL network, I keep hearing the same concern: “We’re preparing students for careers that might not exist in the same form by the time they graduate college.” They’re right to worry.

The numbers across prestigious careers

Let me walk you through what’s happening in each field. It’s not pretty.

Law: One in three junior associates now fear AI will take their jobs. Nearly half of all legal tasks - document review, legal research, due diligence - are technically automatable today. The traditional model of drowning junior associates in grunt work is collapsing.

Big Four accounting: UK graduate job postings in accounting dropped 44% year-over-year. PwC cut 1,500 entry-level positions. Deloitte, PwC, and KPMG all announced 2-4% global staff reductions.

Consulting: McKinsey, Bain, and BCG have frozen starting salaries for three straight years. Why? Because “AI allows fewer junior employees to extract greater value.” Non-senior consulting roles are down 40% to a five-year low.

Investment banking: 54% of banking jobs have high automation potential. OpenAI enlisted 100+ former investment bankers to train AI models on financial modeling - the exact work that trains junior analysts.

Software engineering: U.S. programmer employment fell 27.5% between 2023 and 2025. Junior developer job postings are down 67%. Salesforce announced they’ll hire “no new engineers” in 2025.

Medicine is the exception. Healthcare is growing, with nursing projected to increase 52% by 2033. But even there, medical schools are struggling with the reality that they’re “training doctors for a world that no longer exists.”

The disappearing first rung

Here’s the pattern I keep seeing: the entry-level work that traditionally trained professionals is being automated first.

In law, that’s document review. In accounting, data entry and reconciliation. In consulting, market research and slide prep. In banking, spreadsheet formatting and model building. In software, simple bug fixes and boilerplate code.

This creates a problem. How do you develop expertise if you can’t do the foundational work?

IEEE Spectrum put it bluntly: “In the past, junior engineers have cultivated proficiency while doing simpler, more task-oriented work. But if all of those are going to get taken over, you need to slot in at a higher level almost from day one.”

That’s the shift. Employers now expect entry-level hires to perform at what was previously mid-level. Banks want analysts who’ve “already done the heavy lifting before entering the job.” Tech companies want developers who can “contribute immediately.”

Nobody has patience for training anymore. Not when AI can do the basics.

What this means for St. Louis

St. Louis actually has some advantages here. We’re ranked third nationally for job growth. Healthcare makes up 16.5% of employment and keeps expanding. BJC alone employs over 30,000 people.

The economy is diversifying. Transportation and logistics jobs increased 21.8% over the last decade. Construction is up 25.8%. Startups generate 6,000 new businesses annually.

But here’s the catch: the professional services paths that private school students traditionally pursue - law at major firms, consulting at McKinsey, banking at Goldman - those entry points are narrowing nationwide. A strong local economy doesn’t change that the career ladder is being pulled up.

In discussions I’ve had with career counselors, there’s real tension here. Parents expect the pathway they followed to still exist. The student who gets into WashU Law or Booth Business School assumes there will be a job waiting. That assumption is shakier than it’s been in decades.

What schools should actually do

I’m not going to tell you to overhaul your entire curriculum. But there are concrete steps that make a difference.

Rethink career counseling. The advice given five years ago is outdated. Career counselors need training on how AI is reshaping professional paths. “Study hard, get into a good college, land a prestigious firm job” isn’t wrong - it’s just incomplete now.

Build AI fluency across subjects. This isn’t just for computer science. Future lawyers need to understand AI contract analysis tools. Future accountants need to work with AI audit systems. Future consultants need to know what AI research can and can’t do. Make AI literacy part of English, history, and science - not a standalone elective.

Focus on skills AI can’t replicate. According to the World Economic Forum, empathy, leadership, creative thinking, and analytical reasoning have only 13% potential for AI automation. Make these explicit curriculum goals, not happy accidents.

Create real experience pathways. Since traditional entry-level jobs are disappearing, schools need to help students gain experience other ways. Project-based work with real deliverables. Entrepreneurship programs with actual ventures. Partnerships with local employers for mentorship and micro-internships.

Prepare parents for the conversation. This might be the hardest part. Parents who went to elite schools and entered traditional careers have mental models that are 20 years out of date. “The career path you followed may not exist for your child” is a difficult message. But it’s honest.

The students graduating now will enter a different world

A student who starts high school in 2026 will enter college in a transformed environment and graduate into a further-transformed job market. The timeline isn’t “someday.” It’s now.

McKinsey is cutting staff. EY is delaying starts. Goldman Sachs is training AI on analyst work. These aren’t future predictions - they’re current headlines.

The schools that help students understand this reality and develop the right skills will produce graduates who thrive. The schools that keep preparing students for 2015 careers will produce graduates who struggle.

That’s not pessimism. It’s just the data. And St. Louis private schools - with smaller class sizes, engaged communities, and flexibility to adapt - are actually well-positioned to respond.

The question is whether they will.