Why New College Graduates Keep Booing AI Boosterism and Inevitability Rhetoric

A labor-informed analysis of what the graduating class of 2026 is facing

It’s May in the United States, and university and college students all over the country are taking part in that storied yet time-intensive and emotionally laden tradition of graduation. Usually, a speaker of some reputation gives a speech to graduating students during the ceremony. Sometimes, the speaker is a politician or an intellectual. At my undergraduate graduation from a liberal arts school in MA, the economist Paul Krugman gave a funny short speech that mostly talked about how we wouldn’t remember specifically what he was saying (I don’t) but that this is a time of great celebration and positive anticipation of the future.

Lately universities are inviting high profile celebrities, athletes, and CEOs to give graduation speeches. I am not sure if this was always the case (it doesn’t seem like it was prior to social media and web 2.0) but it’s happening now.

So, when graduates boo CEO speakers who are shilling for Generative AI, I am not surprised.

Why wouldn’t they?

The emotional response cannot be attributed to contrarianism, radicalism, or sheer impulse. Students in 2026 (and the past few years) are graduating into a precarious labor market where entry-level jobs are vanishing at breakneck speed. The increased precarity of the American worker had been on a steady march since the 1980s and only accelerated with the 2008 financial collapse, (hollowing out middle income jobs and replacing them with low-wage and gig work). Then the pandemic erased some of the modest gains that occurred over nearly a decade with a sluggish job market. Currently, the job market for entry-level positions is highly competitive and challenging to break into.

More broadly over the last 50 years, there’s been tepid salary gains alongside increased hours at work, rising precarity, and a lack of access to affordable housing and healthcare—all of which has been driven by union busting and other neoliberal policies that harm American workers.

And now, here we are in the current moment where CEOs who make more in a year than the majority of Americans will see over a lifetime of work telling newly-minted graduates that AI is inevitable, that they should embrace AI, that somehow humanity is made better by AI products, that they need to shape AI (as if this is possible).

Students’ booing is part of a larger response to the fecklessness of the ultra-wealthy business class in America and its deep disregard for worker expertise and development. It also puts on display the generational divide (and the wealth/stability divide between emergent workers and those at the end of their careers).

No one wants to be told their future is deeply insecure and the very precious assets we have cultivated for years pursuing an education (e.g., criticality, creativity, empathy, interconnection, specific skillsets) are likely going to be meaningless in this brave new world.

If I was sitting in that seat, grinding away to complete my undergraduate degree, anxious about the job market, my future, and a ton of other things, I would also boo.

But this is not only about the shaky job market; it is also about the stark class differences between wealthy established (and older) CEOs telling emergent adults to largely throw away their degrees, their skills, their passions, their ethics, in favor of somehow making themselves marketable through AI.

At the same time, there are many dire predictions of total labor disruption due to AI in the coming years.

Of course, these CEOs aren’t talking about how AI might disrupt their jobs and income. The paternalism of these speeches aside—they are tone deaf in many ways—they also miss the purpose of a graduation speech which isn’t to shill for a product but to celebrate the accomplishments of the thousands of students sitting before them.

Using a graduation speech as an advertisement for AI, and to demonstrate CEO/ultra-wealthy relevance is—to quote the youth (though I am likely outdated here) “cringe.”

Of course, I can write here about how AI doesn’t do what it claims to do. That it causes more work, not less. That it makes mistakes, hallucinations, and disregards directions. That it is one of the biggest threats our democracy/economy/environment. That it is making users less cognitively versatile.

But most of these things have been talked about at length.

AI is also going to expand the class divide and the wealth gap. It’s already upending many different industries. It’s already harming the entry-level white-collar job market. It’s already destroying local ecosystems. It’s already being used in mortgage/criminal justice/health care access/state surveillance and so much more to sort people and deny access.

College students are likely aware of the deep injustices that are being perpetrated with AI; my students talk about this constantly. They share their anxieties about environmental collapse. They talk about digital red lining and racial-and-gender bias in algorithms. They worry about AI-interviews, predatory AI gig work, and AI-driven algorithms for sorting job applicants.

They share their love of physical media like records and CDs, notebooks and stickers.

And they talk about their frustration with universities waffling on AI policies, jumping into corporate partnerships that unleash AI on them (whether they want it, use it, are addicted to it, or refuse it).

Sure, there are the stories of students who heavily rely on AI to complete their degrees. There are the interviews with students who have so deeply embedded AI into their learning infrastructure that they cannot distinguish between what they produce and what AI produces for them. And there are the stories of students who are addicted to AI, even though they know it is likely tanking their critical thinking and attention skills.

But rather than blame students for both hating and using AI to move through college, it’s important to understand how higher education’s mixed messages on AI use and the recent full-throated embrace of AI by most higher education administrators is part and parcel of the problem.

Universities were once moral and intellectual centers of discourse. However, we’ve lost the trust of the public over the past decade: confidence in higher education has fallen by 21%. In a moment when high costs, precarious work, and pessimism about the future are coalescing to create a new fatalism (which we see in our politics, in our media, in popular culture), higher education can be an antidote, but we’re not rising to meet the moment.

Instead, most institutions are following similar playbooks laid out by consulting firms backed by venture capital that have already destroyed so many other sectors of our economy (and contributed to this disillusionment). Colleges and universities are becoming a monoculture—one interchangeable with another—which is bad for institutional trust-building, cultivation of belonging, and attracting and retaining students (the holy grail of administrators).

In place of all this depressing and scary stuff, I talk with my students about hope, about care, about ethics, about values, about happiness and meaning. We write. We read. We create. We interact with others to learn. We lead. And we empathize.

Are some of my students using AI for some of this work?

Maybe.

But they are also clearly demonstrating to me through how they speak, what they share in their in-class writing, what materials they produce, that they are learning.

I am not a perfect educator. But I believe in cultivating a sense of purpose, mission, and connection in my students. And none of them boo me when I speak to them because I speak to them with their needs and their anxieties and their futures in mind.

Perhaps these CEOs need an introductory lesson in rhetoric that I share with my students.

Credit KPU Pressbook, “The Rhetorical Triangle.”

· You can share data to appeal to the reader’s reason.

· You can share personal experiences and feelings to connect with your reader.

· You can establish credibility (and appeal to the reader’s values).

· But if you do all of this at once, you are likely to make more of an impact on their sentiment.

· Most importantly, however, you need to know your audience and the purpose you are writing for.

These CEOs can’t read the room.

It’s remarkable that they got to where they are now. But, then again, perhaps AI will also eat their work and relevance…

With 20 years in the classroom, I say the kids are alright. Keep booing. Keep questioning power and intent. Be rhetorically savvy. Don’t fall for hype or fear mongering.

There is hope for a better future with you and your creative, technical, emotional gifts in it.